


Passing Planes

by commoncomitatus



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 5 Times, Chance Meetings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-07 03:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5442473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Samantha Clayton thought that moving to Central City would free her from Oliver’s orbit. She was very, very wrong.</p><p>Or, five times Samantha Clayton found herself thinking about Oliver Queen, and five not-quite-strangers who happened to be there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

***

**2005**

*

She’s not sure what’s worse: the jostling train or her own brain.

Probably the latter, if she’s honest. She’s always been a careful thinker, the kind of person who would take at least a dozen deep breaths before committing to any particular course of action; she’s not used to this, the dizzying speed that her thoughts are taking now, the way her mind is spinning out of control, the way there’s nothing she can do to rein it in. There’s too much, too many thoughts, too many feelings, too much of everything. Honestly she’d probably be more than a little queasy even without the rattling of the train carriages.

The two of them put together, though? That’s a whole new level of torture, and one she was woefully unprepared for.

Really, though, that’s pretty much the story of her life right now. Things she wasn’t prepared for, things that come out of nowhere and sucker-punch her while she’s looking at something else. Things that strike hard, turn her upside-down and inside-out, and leave her reeling with the consequences all on her own. Things like one-night-stands with one of Starling City’s least available playboys, like a thin blue line some weeks later, like impromptu meetings with his mother at their billionaire’s mansion, like million-dollar bribes slid across the couch. Things like helplessness and loneliness and panic, like having the whole world yanked out from underneath her.

Also, things like morning sickness on a speeding train.

She feels like hell. Stomach roiling, head spinning, and she is all too aware of the fact that neither of those things are going to let up any time soon. In a way, that’s the worst part; not the feelings themselves, the helplessness and the hopelessness and the terror, not even the nausea and the sense of drowning, but the fact that this is her life from now on, that everything has changed and she has no choice but to roll with it or let it drag her down.

A mistake. A simple, stupid mistake, and her life will never be the same again. Two people, too much to drink, too many bad decisions; she doesn’t need Moira Queen’s blood money or her faux-motherly advice to realise how far the consequences are going to reach. She didn’t need some under-the-table payoff to remember the whiteout panic when she saw that blue line, or the sick horror on Oliver’s face when she told him about it.

Even back then, she wasn’t stupid. She doesn’t need some self-righteous billionaire’s wife to tell her that Oliver isn’t fit to be a father, that he has no place raising a child. She knew all about his playboy reputation long before she ever fell into bed with him, and she certainly knew it when she took a deep breath and told him she was pregnant. It shouldn’t have hurt like it did when he looked at her like that, eyes wide and wounded like she just stuck a knife in him; it shouldn’t have hurt to see the fear turn to accusation, not when she knew exactly what would happen before she even opened her mouth.

He didn’t say anything, but she knew what he was thinking. _‘How could you do this to me?’_

Sad and stupid as she was, as she still is, she didn’t have the heart to ask him the same in return.

She lets herself think it, though. Jostled and jolted, feeling sick and miserable and utterly alone, on her way to Central City, far away from Oliver and his family, away from a miserable future and into an uncertain one; with no-one to look at her, no-one to judge her, in the privacy of her own head, she lets it chew her up inside, over and over and over.

 _He’s not the only one who had his life ahead of him_ , she thinks, and wonders who the hell Moira Queen is to put a price on hers.

Her child won’t see so much as a cent of Moira’s blood money. Samantha has already decided that. She won’t give the woman the satisfaction of thinking that this is her doing, that she orchestrated it; more, she won’t give her any more reason to keep tabs on her, to send her investigators or whoever else sniffing after her scent. _‘Just to make sure you’re sticking to our agreement,’_ she’d say, right before she set up voyeurs and video cameras outside her home. For her own sanity, as much as her poor child’s privacy, Samantha has no intention of letting that happen.

She thought she would never feel more vulnerable than the moment she found out she was pregnant, but she was very, very wrong. The moment she saw her own face in Moira’s hands, the moment she realised that her people had been spying on her, watching her, digging up all her dirty little secrets… that moment put the other one to shame. Nothing in the world could have prepared her for the ice in her stomach and the acid in her throat, the sudden shattering realisation that Moira Queen could destroy her in a heartbeat if she wanted.

Little wonder she ran away after a moment like that. Little wonder that she heeded Moira’s thinly-veiled warnings and left Starling and Oliver far behind her. Anyone with an ounce of self-preservation would do the same.

The train jumps on the tracks, cutting through her thoughts and sending a lightning-bolt of nausea straight through her. She lurches to her feet and makes an urgent beeline for the nearest restroom; she’s unsteady, shaking, and for the sake of her dignity she tries not to look too closely at the cluster of unsuspecting bystanders that she shoulders out of the way. Rude, most definitely, but they’d thank her if they knew the alternative.

Door locked, eyes closed, hands shaking as she braces, she gives up all pretence of being in control.

She stays in there for a very long time after she’s done, pressing her forehead to the sink and struggling to catch her breath. She feels thoroughly wretched, and it hurts like hell to know that the problem isn’t just in her belly. A little nausea she could handle just fine, but every time she retches it all comes flooding back to her. Oliver, Moira, the blood-money cheque in her wallet and the dossier with her name on it. Everything she was, everything she is, everything she might have wanted to be, all lost to a momentary mistake, and she can’t fight it off any more than she can fight the sickness in her stomach.

She doesn’t want Oliver. What they had was fleeting and meaningless, and as attractive as he is he’s the last person in the world she’d want to spend her life with. Even without Moira’s not-so-gentle nudging, she knows that. He’s an entitled trust-fund playboy who doesn’t care who he hurts so long as he gets what he wants; he’s been raised to take and take and take, and she’s been raised to never, ever do that. She can’t imagine living her life with someone like Oliver, someone who clearly inherited his mother’s moral compass, much less raising a child with him.

All of this is true, has always been true. But it is so, so hard to remember it right now, so hard to keep that picture in her mind when she’s here, alone and miserable, sick to her stomach because she’s carrying his child, hating him because he gets to walk out unscathed, hating herself more because she’s the one who let him. She doesn’t want him in her life, not for a second, but it’s so, so hard not to wish that things could have turned out differently when she’s carrying the consequences all on her own.

When she finally works up the courage to crawl back to her seat, she keeps her head down and her face hidden. It’s stupid, of course — no-one on this train cares about one queasy passenger — but that doesn’t make her feel any less awkward, and it doesn’t stop the shame colouring her cheeks. Not that she should complain about that, she supposes; given the state of her stomach, that’s about the only colour she’ll have in a good long while.

She drops back into her seat with a groan, closes her eyes and leans back against the headrest. She doesn’t feel any better for that little excursion, and the solitude weighs all the more heavily without the distraction of revisiting her breakfast. The whole wide world is waiting for her in Central City; with or without Moira’s little intervention, she knows that it was the right decision, but that does little to stem the tide of panic when she thinks about how far she has to go, how much she has to sacrifice, and how uncertain the future is that’s sprawled out in front of her. It hardly seems fair that Oliver can just trundle along with his life, never changing and never knowing that he should have. Her fault, she knows, at least as much as Moira’s, but the cut is still deep.

It’s for the best. She has to keep reminding herself of that. What little chance she has of finding a life for herself in Central City would have dwindled to nothing if she’d told Oliver the truth; she would have spent the rest of her life in the public eye, every second of her pregnancy up there on some big TV screen or printed in some cheap tabloid. She’s all too familiar with the way the media works to know the names they’d tar her with. _Whore,_ if she’s lucky; if she’s not she’ll be _the other woman_ , the girl who got between Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance, and that’s the last thing in the world she wants for any one of them. Whatever she thinks of Oliver, however much he might deserve it, Laurel deserves better.

Central City is safe. Laurel will never need to know that her dirtbag boyfriend sired an illegitimate child, and Samantha can suffer through the rest of her pregnancy in relative anonymity. She can finish school, carve out a life for herself, work hard, maybe even make herself happy somewhere down the line. Years from now, maybe when the nameless thing growing inside of her has become a real person, when it’s her child, when she’s learned how to balance the struggles of being a single parent with the life she needs to give her child the life it deserves.

It’s not much to look forward to. All on her own with a baby on the way, two lives resting in her hands, it’s scary as hell. More than anything in the world, she’s terrified that one day she’ll need to cash that cheque.

 _No,_ she thinks, and the defiance helps her to straighten up a bit. _Never._

She’s about to take a deep breath, perhaps venture a glance out the window, when a hand drops onto her shoulder.

“Excuse me…”

It’s only the nausea that keeps her from crying out, from yelping her surprise and probably falling out of her seat; she doesn’t trust herself to do any of that at the moment, though, and it’s pretty much the limit of her ability just to turn her head to the side, to focus her vision enough to find the face.

The woman is a lot older than her, probably around her mother’s age, and there’s a pitying sort of smile on her face. Samantha tries to remember if she’s one of the unfortunates she shoved aside before. Probably. It would be just her luck to stumble into someone unwilling to let the moment slide.

“Sorry if I shoved you,” she mumbles, massaging her temples and trying to look as miserable as possible; what’s the point in feeling this horrible if she can’t milk it for some much-needed sympathy? “Believe me, you wouldn’t have thanked me if I hadn’t.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

She doesn’t even bother to ask for permission, just drops down into the seat opposite. Samantha frowns, but the presumptuous stranger is unaffected; she holds out a hand, offers a plastic cup filled with something strong-smelling and very hot. Samantha stares at it for a moment, half wondering if it’s going to explode the instant she touches it. Probably not; the cup has the train company’s logo on the side, and for all the exotic stuff they sell out in the dining cart she rather doubts that home-made explosives are numbered among them.

“Uh…?” she gets out, and the woman laughs like that’s the best joke she’s heard in a year.

“Ginger tea,” she says by way of explanation. The laughter subsides in a second, and the tenderness in her eyes makes Samantha want to cry. “It should help you to feel better.”

Samantha somewhat doubts that, but she takes the cup anyway; physically or mentally, she’s in no condition to turn away a well-meaning gesture, however futile. “Thank you.”

She breathes in the smell of it, the steam and the heat, and tries not to think too hard about the pair of eyes watching her every move. The woman settles into her seat, doesn’t take her eyes off Samantha, and doesn’t hesitate for so much as a second before she starts to pry.

“How far along are you?”

Samantha flushes furiously. _Is this a thing now?_ she wonders. Is she going to be spending the next seven months politely waving away too-curious strangers poking and prodding at her belly and demanding to know everything going on inside of her? She’s half-tempted to try the ‘polite refusal’ thing on for size, to get some practice in before she’s too far gone to hide behind heavy clothing. _‘Thank you for the tea, but it’s none of your business.’_ A bit rude, yes, but given the circumstances maybe not too much.

Not that she has the courage for any of that. Pathetic and nauseous as she is, the best she manages is, “I’m not… it’s not… how did you…?”

The woman laughs again, warm and hearty, and shakes her head in that way older people do sometimes when they want to say _‘oh, you kids today…’_

“A mother can always tell,” she says, a slightly politer variation of the same theme. “You look just like I did when I was pregnant with Laurel.” Samantha’s guts clench at the name, a spasm that has nothing (and everything) to do with her pregnancy. Her companion misinterprets the sick little moan as a lack of comprehension, and hastily adds, “That’s my eldest.”

Samantha grits her teeth, swallows very hard, and tries to nod. “Laurel.” 

“Well. Dinah, technically, after yours truly. But she’s something of a free spirit, and you can imagine how well that went down once she hit her rebellious pre-teen years. So Laurel it is.”

“Yes.” She swallows again, sighs. “I mean, no. I mean… Laurel Lance?”

Dinah — _Mrs Lance_ — doesn’t look particularly surprised. “You two know each other?”

“Not… uh… well…” She thinks of Oliver, remembers seeing the two of them together every now and then, remembers how that didn’t matter at all after a few drinks too many. “We share… uh…”

There are about a hundred ways she could end that sentence, but apparently this woman is Laurel’s mother, and that renders almost all of them wholly inappropriate. So, instead, she gestures vaguely and hopes that Mrs Lance will interpret the floundering as _‘we share a few acquaintances’_ and not _‘we shared Oliver Queen’s penis’_.

Blessedly, she seems to take it the right way, or at least not the wrong way. It’s a fair assumption; Laurel is a social butterfly, and from her limited experience she gets along with everyone. There’s no reason to assume foul play when a more logical explanation is sitting right there in front of her.

“Mm,” Mrs Lance muses, almost to herself. “Well, I suppose you young people do tend to flock together.”

Samantha almost laughs at that. She probably would have, if she trusted herself to open her mouth without throwing up. It’s been a good few weeks since she had the luxury of calling herself young. She threw her youth and her innocence out of the window when she saw that thin blue line, when she realised what it meant and let the reality sink in, when _cheap one-night stand_ was replaced with _motherhood_.

She waved goodbye to the chance of ever finding those things again, youth and innocence and cheapness, when she told Oliver about it, when he stared at her like she’d single-handedly ruined his life, as though she was the only one there that night. She waved it all goodbye when Moira invited her to their mansion and tried to buy her off. There’s no place for youth with a baby on the way, no time for innocence when she has to learn to be a parent, and she finds herself choking on tears, fighting to keep from breaking down in front of this not-so-total stranger.

“Yeah,” she manages, and forces herself to grow up, to replace the image of Oliver’s terror-stricken face with a vision of the last time she saw Laurel on his arm, laughing and dancing and so painfully happy.

Laurel Lance is a good person; that’s a big part of why this is so brutal. They don’t run into each other very often, but they’ve seen each other around, shared the occasional ’hello’ or a cup of coffee with mutual friends; it’s nothing, really, a standard situation for passing-on-the-street acquaintances with intersecting social circles, but it’s still enough to make this hurt more than it otherwise would have. Laurel is intelligent and hard-working; she has more compassion in any given moment than the entire Queen family combined. In another world, one where Oliver Queen never existed, they might even have gone on to become friends.

No chance of that now, though. Laurel doesn’t need to know about this, doesn’t need to know how much damage her boyfriend has caused, and Samantha would sooner let Oliver walk out of this with no responsibility than break that poor woman’s heart. At least not while her own is aching enough for all three of them, when she’s already resigned to carry everyone’s share of this mistake-turned-nightmare. No point in dragging anyone else into it, least of all someone like Laurel, who was never truly involved in the first place, who would never have been more than a heartbroken spectator even if she had known. Let someone come out of this untouched and unscathed, she thinks; let someone, if only one person, stay young and innocent.

Mrs Lance is looking at her strangely, like she can sense this is more personal than Samantha would care to admit, like maybe she’s aware of a connection that runs deeper than _‘young people flock together’_. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that she’d have her suspicions; Oliver’s reputation as a playboy and troublemaker isn’t exactly a well-kept secret, and if Mrs Lance shares even half of her daughter’s keen intellect she must know what that will mean in the end for her wide-eyed lovestruck daughter. That he will one day break her heart is inevitable, it’s just a question of when, and Samantha really does not want to be the cause of that.

She thinks about saying something, admitting to the crime even as she doesn’t know for sure whether or not she’s accused in the first place, but Mrs Lance cuts her off before she gets the chance.

“Anyway,” she says, clipped and clean, like a school teacher. “Ginger tea always helped me during these torturous commutes. It felt fitting to share it with someone in the same boat, so to speak. What’s the point in learning these things, after all, if you don’t get to pass them on? After all, I’d like to think I won’t be having this talk with my own daughters for quite some…” She cuts herself off very quickly, but of course the damage is done, the implication as clear as daylight long before she starts floundering to take it back. “That is…”

Samantha presses her fingertips to her stomach, sad and just a little wounded. It’s silly, really, feeling like that; she must have known a moment like this was coming. Of course this older woman would see her situation and think, _stupid girl_. Of course she would see the ugly mistake behind the so-called ‘miracle of life’. She’s seen everything else well enough, hasn’t she? Of course she’d look at a knocked-up young woman on a train and think, _thank god I raised my daughters better than that_.

“It’s fine,” she says with a weary, resigned sigh. “You can judge me if you like. Hell, I do.”

“You shouldn’t.” Suddenly, Mrs Lance’s voice is very firm. “And I… well, I didn’t mean it the way I’m sure it sounded. Your choices, whatever they are… I’m sure they’re perfectly valid, and I’m sure they work for you.” Samantha has to swallow down a bitter, angry laugh; blessedly, Mrs Lance assumes it’s another wave of nausea, and presses on without even pausing for breath. “I’d never condemn a young woman for enjoying herself. I only meant…” She trails off again, sighs heavily. “Well. A mother wants the best for her children. You’ll soon learn that.”

Samantha, of course, has already learned it. Moira Queen taught that particular lesson excruciatingly well.

“Yeah,” she says, very softly. Mrs Lance is being kind to her; no sense in making her feel bad with pesky little things like the truth. “Yeah, I’m sure I will.”

Still, it’s very hard not to cry, very hard not to turn away and let the humiliation show, let out all the terrible things that have been running through her head from the moment she got the news, the moment she broke it to Oliver and saw the look on his face, the moment Moira made it clear that her family was worth more than Samantha’s. It is so, so hard not to let this woman, this stranger, Laurel Lance’s mother, see just how frightened she truly is and just how right she is to wish for more for her own daughters. Better to want them to be better, she supposes, than sit around with cash in hand, waiting for the moment when they’re not.

Mrs Lance must sense some of the discomfort in her, though she can’t know how deep it runs, and she allows an apologetic grimace. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I seem to be putting my foot in my mouth.”

“It’s fine,” Samantha says again.

“You’re too forgiving. I’m sure your little one will appreciate that.”

Samantha tries not to think about that. She stares broodily into her tea, wonders if her child will appreciate anything she does, wonders if it will hate her for the things she’s done.

The tea has cooled a little, so she ventures a sip or two, and finds herself pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t immediately threaten to come back up. The taste is strong, bitter but not unpleasant, and the baby doesn’t hate it. The more she drinks, the more her body relaxes, inch by inch until she can almost imagine making it through the rest of the journey in one piece. Whatever else might be said about her, Mrs Lance clearly knows her stuff about this particular problem, and Samantha is very, very grateful.

“This is good,” she says, tilting her head at the cup.

It’s more to break the tension than anything else, but it has the desired effect; Mrs Lance starts smiling again, as bright and helpful as before, like the momentary stumble never happened at all. “It saved my dignity more than a few times on trips like this. And you…” She sighs, smile fading in deference to raw, pained empathy. “A young girl on the train alone, looking as miserable as you do… well. I don’t need to know all the gory details of your situation to know that a helping hand never hurt anyone.”

Samantha sighs; she’s still reeling from that word again. _Young_.

“Am I really that pathetic?” she asks, and can scarcely believe how small she sounds.

“That’s an ugly word. I’d never use it, and you shouldn’t either. I said ‘miserable’, and that’s precisely what I meant.” It feels like it should be a challenge, but it doesn’t sound like one, and in any case Mrs Lance is changing tack again almost before she’s finished the sentence. “At any rate, feel free to send me away if I misjudged. My husband is always telling me I’m too quick to jump into other people’s business. He calls it ‘sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong’. I tell him he knew what he was getting into when he married an academic.” She chuckles, more for her own benefit than for Samantha’s. “In any case, why in the world would I leave you there to suffer when I had an idea of something that might help? Why, if it were one of my daughters…”

 _It could have been,_ Samantha thinks, and nearly vomits again. Out loud, she just says, “I don’t know your daughter very well, Mrs Lance, but I don’t think she’d ever be this stupid.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” There’s no cruelty in the way she says it, no insult to either Laurel or Samantha herself; it’s just an observation, plain and simple, from someone who has been around for long enough to make it with confidence. “If experience has taught me anything, it’s that most people on this planet are capable of great stupidity. I’m not deluded enough that I’d neglect to include my own daughters in that. Or myself, for that matter. Heaven forbid I ever find myself faced with a difficult choice, who’s to say I won’t end up making the stupid one?”

Samantha sighs. There are a lot of difficult choices in her life right now, so many that she can’t seem to pull herself out from under them, and she’s pretty sure she hasn’t made the right one even once thus far. It was a stupid idea to tell Oliver that she was pregnant in the first place; she should have taken this path before he ever had a chance to panic, before he ever had a chance to get his mother involved. She should have cut Moira off before she started, too; she shouldn’t have given her a chance to send her investigators sniffing around, shouldn’t have let her put that awful, insulting deal on the table.

Going back even further, and if she’s brutally honest with herself, she should never have slept with him in the first place. She’s always known who he is, what he does, and she was never deluded enough to think that she was his first outside of Laurel. She should have kept herself away from his sphere of influence, should have stayed far, far away from anywhere she knew he would be. She should have taken care of herself, her needs not just her wants.

There are a lot of things that she should have done, truthfully, and a whole lot more that she shouldn’t have, but of course it’s too late to go back now. It’s too late to do anything but regret and try her best to make things right for her unborn child.

It makes her angry that Oliver won’t ever have to do the same thing, won’t ever have to make his mistakes right, this one or any others. It makes her furious that Moira will always keep him safe and protected, sheltered from his own stupidity. It doesn’t matter what he does, or who, because as long as she’s around he won’t ever have to face the consequences.

All the more reason, she supposes, to keep him as far away from her child as possible.

That doesn’t make it any easier, though. Going through this alone, knowing that she’s the one with the red letter on her forehead, the scarlet woman who slept around and had to pay the price. The injustice chokes her, cuts off her breathing, but it also makes her more determined. It makes her grip the little plastic cup a little too tightly, feel the heat burn into her palm. It makes her straighten her spine and touch her stomach, letting the contact linger with with a little more tenderness and a little less pain, makes her treat herself with just a touch more compassion. She has to; no-one else will do it for her.

“You’re right,” she says aloud.

Mrs Lance frowns. “That’s not something I get told very often,” she says, good-natured but confused. “But it’s nice to hear.”

“It’s true.” She sighs. “I wish you weren’t, but you are.”

Mrs Lance looks uneasy for a moment, like she wants to lean in and touch her but knows better than to try. Possibly it’s the part of her that understands pregnancy, the self-preservation instincts of someone incubating a life inside them, or maybe it’s the academic, the professor who has seen enough troubled students to recognise when one is prone to snap at anyone one gets too close. Either way, she keeps her distance, studies Samantha’s face for a long moment and chooses her next words with obvious care. She’s good at this, and that hurts.

“I’m sure things must seem terribly bleak at the moment,” she says, then chuckles when Samantha shoots her a puzzled look. “I don’t need to know your story to know that. It’s written all over your face. You’re in trouble now, and you think you’ll have to face it all on your own for the rest of your life. You can’t see a light at the end of this great big train-tunnel, and I’ll bet you’re starting to wonder if it ever existed at all, if maybe you just imagined it.”

“Something like that,” Samantha concedes sadly.

Mrs Lance claps her hands together. “Well, what do you know? Someone willing to listen to their elders.” The self-deprecation makes them both chuckle, strong in Mrs Lance’s case and weak in Samantha’s. “You think the world is a stark, terrible place. You have no idea how you’re going to get through this, but you will. You’re young. You’re…”

Samantha swallows very hard, admits out loud the doubt that’s been tugging at her ever since she first heard that word. “I don’t feel very young.”

“Oh, I’m sure you don’t. Getting a bun in the oven does that to the best of us.” Her smile softens, like a memory. “But you are. Believe me, my dear, you are incredibly young. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my years of educating young people like yourself, it’s that they have a remarkable talent for surviving. You’ll be just fine.”

Right now, it’s hard to believe. Right now, it’s hard to see anything past this moment, another seven long months of feeling like this and then a lifetime spent raising a little human. If she really is as young as Mrs Lance seems to think she is, it’s hard to imagine that she’ll ever be ready to be someone else’s parent, to be their protector and their guiding light and all those other things that parents are supposed to be. She feels so far from her youth, but she is not nearly ready for that.

Mrs Lance isn’t really that old, but she’s a whole lot older than Samantha. She’s mature, worldly, and has more than enough experience to spout sage advice and home truths on a whim to some knocked-up girl on a train. Samantha hasn’t even made it through college yet, much less figured out her place in the wider world. She thought she would have a whole lifetime for that, but now she has all of seven months. Seven months, and then it’s all over. Motherhood, ready or not.

And that’s just it: it’s not about her any more. It doesn’t matter, really, whether she’s fine or not, whether she’s young or ready or anything else; it doesn’t matter if she can suck it up and deal with this curveball all on her own, if she can drag herself through college, find a job, navigate her way through life’s ups and downs, if she’s capable of finding a place for herself in the world even with a baby on the way. None of that is going to matter at all if she doesn’t figure out, and soon, how to be a good parent.

This baby deserves that. It deserves someone it can count on, someone better than paparazzi-punching Oliver, better than cheque-writing Moira, better than all the Queens and their toxic influence, better than a scared young girl on a train sipping ginger tea and trying not to cry.

This growing blob of nausea and hormones, as miserable as it’s making her right now, deserves a mother that can raise it right, a mother who is worldly and wise, a mother who knows what the hell she’s doing. It deserves a mother like Mrs Lance, like clever, hard-working Laurel would be if she was sitting here in Samantha’s place, if Oliver had slept with the woman he should have. It doesn’t deserve to spend its life paying for its parents’ mistakes.

“I’ll be fine,” she echoes out loud, and doesn’t pretend that she believes it. “Sure. Okay. But what about her?”

Mrs Lance quirks a brow at the choice of pronoun. She doesn’t question it, doesn’t say _‘don’t get your hopes up, love, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment’_. She doesn’t, no, but Samantha can tell that she wants to.

It’s probably for the best that she keeps those particular thoughts to herself, because how would Samantha even begin to explain that? Where does she even start, telling a perfect stranger why it’s so important? How in the world would she explain the terror that seizes in her chest when she remembers that it might not be, that it might be a boy, a son that might grow up to resemble Oliver in more than just his face?

“She, or he, will be fine as well,” Mrs Lance tells her. She sounds like she believes it, too, like she really does know everything there is to know about some stranger on a train and her unborn child. “The fact that you’re asking the question, the fact that you care enough to worry, even this early… well, that says it all. That little baby isn’t even born yet, and you’re already afraid that you won’t be a good mother. Believe me, if you care that much now, you’ll have nothing to worry about when the day comes.”

It doesn’t feel like the truth, but of course Samantha can’t say that. Not to a woman who has gone out of her way to help some knocked-up girl she’s never met, who recognises so much more than a bout of morning sickness. She can’t tell her that she’s wrong, that she will never, ever be good enough to make up for the mistakes she’s made already.

She tries not to think about Laurel again, tries not to imagine her and Oliver in five years’ time, all settled down and happy and planning to start a family. Planning it, properly, because that’s what people do, or at least what they’re supposed to do. Honestly, Samantha wants nothing but the best for Laurel, if not for Oliver, and for a moment she gives serious thought to warning her mother, to flat-out telling her that Oliver Queen is someone to avoid, that she should force the break-up if she can, do whatever it takes to get her precious daughter away from him. It’s the least she can do, she thinks, as payment for all this unsolicited help.

She doesn’t, of course. She’s afraid, and all too aware of her precarious position; she can’t risk exposing herself any more than she already has. Mrs Lance clearly shares her daughter’s intellect, and it wouldn’t take more than a word for her to read between the lines, to see where Oliver’s name has come from and why it’s on this girl’s mind right at this moment. Word would get back to Laurel, then to Oliver, then Moira would dig her claws in and that would be the end of everything. No turning back; in a heartbeat, her life, Oliver’s, Laurel’s, and her child’s, would be ruined.

She can’t do that, won’t do that. She’ll carry it alone, for as long as she can, and hope that’ll put enough distance between them that by the time the truth gets it, if it ever does, it won’t matter any more.

For a long time, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t trust herself to speak, so instead she just drinks her tea, swallows and swallows until there’s nothing left. Her stomach seethes just a little when she’s done, mostly because she never learned how to drink slowly, but she doesn’t feel so cripplingly sick any more. It’s good enough, at least, to take her through the rest of the journey, and at least for now that’s all she can hope for.

“Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it,” Mrs Lance says, smiling like there really is nothing extraordinary about it, like she offers ginger tea to pregnant strangers all the time. Maybe she does; Samantha wouldn’t know. “In any case, I should probably be thanking you. This commute is a nightmare of boredom most of the time, and you’ve made for pleasant company.”

Samantha chokes on a laugh. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Oh, it’s true. I make this trip often enough that I’d know. Starling to Central City five times a week…” She sighs, heavy and so very weary, then shakes her head. “Maybe one day I’ll finally convince Quentin to move.”

She says it like a joke, but Samantha still blanches deathly pale. The idea of Laurel having any reason to visit Central City, of running into her on the street with Oliver’s child in tow, of having to make small-talk while the baby he thought he’d lost sleeps or cries in her arms… it makes her blood run cold, makes her want to run away and lock herself in the restroom again, this time for good.

“That… sounds like a lot of hard work…” she manages, a pitiful little squeak.

Mrs Lance chuckles, humourless but still self-deprecating. “Oh, you have no idea,” she says. “He loves Starling too much to even have the discussion. Laurel too. They’re birds of a feather, those two. You’d have to pry that city out of their hands.” She sighs again, but it’s softer now, a touch closer to nostalgia. “No. I’m afraid if I ever make this journey permanent, it’ll be all on my lonesome.”

 _Like me,_ Samantha thinks, but she doesn’t say it aloud. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that. We all make sacrifices for the ones we love.” She smiles, touches her own stomach, that same nostalgia blooming into fondness behind her eyes. “Once that little one arrives, you’ll soon learn that the reward is worth the price.”

“I hope so,” Samantha says. She really, really does.

Mrs Lance does touch her, then, leaning in close to squeeze her hand. Samantha flinches, reminded all too vividly of Moira, of her bony fingers and the ice in her eyes when she made those threat-coloured offers. She pulls away, hopes she doesn’t look too pale, and fiddles with the empty cup.

Sensing her faux pas, Mrs Lance leans back a little, gives her some room. “You’ll be fine,” she says again. “You’ll both be just fine.”

Samantha closes her eyes. She thinks of Oliver’s infidelity, of Laurel’s obliviousness. She thinks of Moira Queen and the terrible things she’s done to protect her child, of just how far-reaching the price of that protectiveness will be. She hopes that she won’t be like that, manipulating and twisting people, tearing other lives apart to protect the only one she cares about. She would give anything to keep from going down that path, and she hates herself for that; it makes her feel insufficient, not good enough.

Moira would do anything for her child; Mrs Lance endures a long, arduous commute five times a week so she can be closer to her family in another city. Meanwhile, Samantha is picking up her entire life and moving away, not to give her child its best chance but to outrun her own mistakes, to hide from her own stupidity. She’s not even a mother yet, and already she’s setting the worst possible example.

Mrs Lance is right: already, she cares about the little life inside of her. But at the same time, there’s already a list of mistakes as long as this train that it will be forced to pay for. Growing up without a father, raised by a mother who is proud and stubborn and prone to stupidity, who won’t accept a bribe but will still follow its instructions to the letter. Already, she’s doing everything wrong; what chance does she have of doing things right when the kid is here?

She turns to look out of the window, watches the landscape speeding past. It makes her stomach churn all over again, brings the taste of tea back into her mouth. She wishes it was worse, wishes it was bad enough that she’d have to excuse herself again. She wants to run away from this woman, this woman who understands her situation so much more intimately than she knows and so much less than she should. She wants to run away and hide, not just from the things she’s saying but from the way she looks at her, a professor’s dignity and a mother’s faith, the parts of her that know better because they are older and wiser and more worldly and the parts of her that don’t know anything because she might have been here but she has never been _here_.

It’s difficult, but she doesn’t run away. Not this time. She just sits there, tasting a stranger’s kindness at the back of her mouth and thinking of all the mistakes that her child will pay for.

“Thank you,” she says, and wishes it was enough.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

**2006**

*

They tell her it’s a boy, and she bursts into tears.

She can’t help herself. She’s not usually the kind to make a scene — at least, not in front of anyone — but it’s been a long, long night full of pain and screaming and more bodily fluids than she ever thought she’d see in her lifetime, and she doesn’t have the strength to hold her emotions in check. She barely has the strength to breathe, much less pretend to be happy.

Overwrought, overwhelmed, and beyond exhausted, it’s honestly something of a miracle that she has enough left in her to make a sound at all, and a part of her is grateful that the baby is so much louder than she is, that his crying smothers hers, that he’s the one they’re all crowding and swarming around. She doesn’t want them to look at her, doesn’t want to have to smile through the tears.

They don’t expect her to; she knows that, though it doesn’t help very much. They’ve probably seen every reaction under the sun, and a dozen more besides, and as long as she’s healthy and at least relatively coherent nothing else really matters. No-one’s getting paid for compassion, after all.

She doesn’t look at him. She can’t. They thrust him into her arms, warm and wet and wailing, and she can’t bring herself to look down and see his face. It’s still not really sunk in, the fact that this whimpering, whining _thing_ is her child, but she’s seen enough birth scenes on television to know that it’s supposed to be a revelation, a moment of utter euphoria. That lightning-bolt the first time a new mother looks down and finds her baby’s face, the bond it’s supposed to forge; she knows that it’s supposed to mean something beautiful, but from the moment she heard the word _‘boy’_ , the only face she could see was Oliver’s.

The baby wriggles in her arms. Her _son_ wriggles in her arms, skin pressed to skin, sharing her warmth. He’s maybe two minutes old, but she’s the one who feels fragile and helpless.

She closes her eyes. It shouldn’t feel as impossible as it does, this moment nine months in the making. Nine months of pain and panic, of wrestling endlessly with bad decisions and worse consequences. Nine months of hopelessness and helplessness, of hormones and heaving her guts out and hating the sight of herself; nine months of feeling her child growing and watching Oliver’s wild-child lifestyle splashed all over the news.

She didn’t cash Moira’s blood money, but she kept the cheque close, a bitter reminder for those too-frequent moments when she was sure she would drown. It hurt, looking in the mirror, watching the life swelling inside of her and realising how completely alone she was. It hurt like hell, like nothing she’d ever felt, but every time she took out that cheque and remembered what it stood for the ache grew slightly duller.

 _‘Keep your child away from my son,’_ it said, and she cried to herself and thought, _keep your son away from my child._

Keeping her distance was easy when she was pregnant, when it wasn’t a baby but some intangible thing growing in her, when it wasn’t _her son_ but _her future child_. It was easy to stay away from Oliver when she didn’t have to think too hard about what that meant, when she didn’t have the child cradled in her arms, when she didn’t have to look down into its newborn face and realise that it’s his as well as hers, that it has all of that vicious, vindictive, virulent Queen blood running in its veins.

It’s not just Oliver, either. More than the paparazzi-punching playboy, there’s Moira’s blood in there as well. God, that terrifies her.

She’s not ready to be a mother. She’s sure as hell not ready to have a son. Nine months is supposed to be enough; it’s supposed to have prepared her for the moment they shoved that tiny little human into her arms, the moment it started crying and waiting for her to help it. It was supposed to prepare her for everything, but it hasn’t prepared her for anything at all. She feels defective; her child — her _son_ — has barely been in the world five minutes, and already she feels like she’s failed him, like she’s focusing on all the wrong things, thinking about all the wrong people and all the wrong problems; he’s two minutes into his life, and she’s already broken the promise she made herself all those months ago.

She wanted a daughter. It’s a terrible thing to think, she knows, and all the more so with the little baby boy squirming in her arms, but she can’t help herself. A girl, she could raise alone. A girl, she could teach and guide and help, could watch her grow and imagine she sees herself in her face. But a boy? She’s not equipped to raise a boy, and she’s definitely not equipped to raise a boy with Queen genes. She is so afraid of seeing Oliver in his eyes, so afraid that he will inherit that playboy charm, that spiteful temper, that he’ll inherit all of Oliver’s worst traits; worse, she is so afraid that all those things will grow unchecked without a dad to teach him how to be better. She is so, so afraid that one day he will sit her down, look her in the eye and say, _‘I got some girl pregnant, and it wasn’t my girlfriend’_.

One day, she knows, he’ll ask about his father. Five years from now, or ten, or fifteen, he’ll look up at her and ask _‘who was he?’_ or _‘what was he like?’_ or _‘why don’t you ever talk about him?’_. And when that happens it will be her job to have an answer. She’ll need to think of something to say, something softer than the shameful truth. _‘Your mommy made a mistake; she did a stupid thing and we won’t ever talk about it again.’_ It would be easy and honest, and a part of her wants that for them both, but she knows she can’t. He’s barely drawn his first breath, but already he deserves more than that.

She wonders whether the Queen family will still be in the news five years from now, or ten, or fifteen, whenever the day comes that it matters. She wonders whether Oliver will have grown up even a little bit by then, whether he’ll still be punching out anyone who upsets him, still be taking hapless girls to bed and laughing off the consequences. She wonders, and hates herself for wondering, if Moira will still be there to sweep his screw-ups under the rug, if she’ll ever run out of million-dollar cash bribes. She wonders if the next unlucky girl will have the foresight she has to get out while she still can.

It’s all wrong. She’s exhausted, soaked in sweat and other things, cradling her newborn son in her arms, feeling his whimpers slowly subside into sniffles and quiet breathing; she should be celebrating the miracle of life, marvelling at the tiny little person pressed against her chest, the tiny little person that she made. She should be revelling in motherhood, not too scared to look her son in the eye.

They tell her it’s normal. Feeling conflicted, bursting into tears, not getting that world-stopping burst of euphoria that the soap operas promise. They tell her that it’s the drugs in her system, that it’s the exhaustion and the exertion, that it’s any one of a hundred things she doesn’t understand and doesn’t care about. They tell her everything they think she wants to hear, everything they think will make it all better, but they don’t tell her the one thing she does want, the one thing that would help. They don’t tell her the truth.

They don’t tell her that she’s wrong. They don’t tell her that she’s a terrible person. They don’t tell her that her son is doomed to follow in his playboy father’s footsteps (or, worse, his conniving, blackmailing grandmother’s). They don’t tell her that she ought to be ashamed of herself.

She wants that. She wants someone to tell her to think of Oliver, of the poor young man who won’t ever know that he has a son out there. She wants someone to tell her that he will grow up, that everyone does, that it’s inevitable. She wants someone to point out that one day he’ll be the kind of man her little boy would be proud to call a father, and that she’s the one depriving them both of that chance. She wants someone to tell her that she’s selfish, that she’s letting her own stupid feelings override what’s best for the son she’s only just met. She wants someone to say what she’s been thinking for nine long months, to look her in the eye and say that she is not fit to be his mother. And yes, loathe as she is to admit it, maybe a part of her wants someone to take him away from her and save them both.

“I’m not ready for this,” she says, and they tell her that’s normal.

“He doesn’t have a father,” she says, and they say that’s all right.

“I can’t raise him,” she says, and they promise her that she can.

None of that is what she wants to hear, and when she finally summons the courage to look down at that tiny scrunched-up face, when she finally finds it in her to look her son in the eyes, she wishes that she could take it back.

Oliver would be a terrible father. She knows that. He’s young and ignorant, with a bad attitude and a dangerous reputation; he’s a pretty-boy rich-kid who thinks he’s got something to prove. He freaked out when she told him she was carrying his child, and he almost passed out with relief when she told him she’d lost it. That’s not the kind of man she wants anywhere near her new son, and though she knows deep down in her heart that it was the right decision, still, right here and right now with the boy in her arms, it’s hard not to regret.

She wonders if he would change his mind if he saw this scrunched-up little ball of tears. She wonders if he’d look at her differently if he saw what she’s been through over the last nine months. Theirs was a fifteen-minute fling, a night of drunken passion that frankly left them both feeling guilty and unsatisfied, and neither of them expected it to turn into anything like this. He wanted a moment’s escape from his girlfriend and her ideals of domesticity, and she just wanted to feel good for a minute or two. It was a convenient, lonely, ships-in-the-night sort of thing, nothing more for either one of them.

Now, for the first time since it happened, she lets herself wonder. Would it have brought them together? Would it have turned this messy, complicated thing into something simpler, something almost easy?

Would he have held her hair back through the months of morning sickness? Would he have been kind and gentle when her emotions got the best of her, when she smashed glasses against the wall or cried herself to sleep for no reason at all? Would he have comforted her, taken care of her, rushed out for sushi or pizza in the middle of the night like those stupid soap operas? Would he have understood what she was going through, looked at the swell in her stomach and seen that the life growing in her belonged to him as well? Would it have changed him? Given the chance, would he have stepped away from the self-destructive road he’s walking, or would he have just resented her all the more for dragging him away from the life he loved? 

Even now, even with the baby right in front of her, real and solid and hers, still she can’t help wishing that it never happened. Her son isn’t soap-opera beautiful, and the emotion that surges in her chest isn’t the kind of perfect, pretty love-at-first-sight motherhood that she knows she’s supposed to feel. It’s panic and pain, nervousness and nausea and forty-two flavours of regret. It’s every bad decision that she ever made and knowing that the alternative would be so much worse.

Looking down, seeing him for the very first time… it doesn’t make everything okay. It’s supposed to do that, but it doesn’t. It just makes her realise how scared she is.

“I’m not a mother,” she whispers, and they say, “You are now.”

—

They let her leave after a couple of days, and she’s too ashamed to tell them that she’s not ready to go home.

She doesn’t, at least not straight away. She should, she knows, but the fear leaves her almost crippled. Instead, she finds a quiet bench outside the hospital, and sits there with the baby in her arms ( _William_ , she reminds herself a dozen times or more; his name is _William_ ). She keeps him close, rocking both of them, and tries to remember any of the valuable lessons they taught her. How to hold him, how to feed him, how to change him and bathe him and keep him warm and safe; there is so much to keep straight, so many things she needs to do if she wants to keep him alive. It’s beyond frightening.

He sleeps a lot, and when he’s not asleep he’s crying. They’re both as terrifying as each other, honestly, because he’s so quiet when he sleeps that she worries he’s stopped breathing, and so heartbreakingly loud when he cries that she would do anything in the world just to make it stop. Most of the time she doesn’t even know what’s making him cry in the first place; she just fumbles and scrabbles blindly among the most obvious options. Sometimes, by sheer dumb luck she finds the right one; more often, she doesn’t. Either way, she still ends up feeling helpless.

For the time being, at least, he seems content to sleep, and Samantha is happy to let him stay that way, both of them comforted by the other’s presence, her by rhythm of his breath and him by the warmth of her skin. It’s easier when she’s holding him, because she knows for certain that he’s still alive, that he really is all right. If something happened to him, if he stopped breathing, she would feel it. She might not be able to do anything about it, granted, but she’d feel it. If nothing else, at least she would know.

She doesn’t even think about going home until after he starts stirring, until he shifts and blinks his eyes and squints up at her as if to say _‘why are we still out here?’_. It’s amazing, how much emotion he can show in his eyes, in those sleepy little blinks and puzzled looks; the part of her that’s still rational, small though it is after so long in a hospital bed, knows that it’s probably all in her head, that he’s probably just being a baby, staring at her face because it’s the only thing close enough for his tiny little eyes to focus on. She knows that, of course, but it’s really easy to forget it when he’s looking up at her like that.

“You’re cute,” she says. It’s the first time in his tiny life that she’s dared to say anything to him, the first time since they thrust him into her arms that she’s been brave enough to think of him as a little person, as _her_ little person. “You’re very, very cute. And I’m sorry if I drop you on your head a few times when we get home. We’re both kind of new at this, and—”

“That’s an optimistic start.”

Samantha almost has a heart attack. She can’t immediately see anyone and so of course she just assumes that her days-old son is talking to her.

She stops short of actually screaming, but only because William beats her to it, cocking his head and wailing his little lungs out until she leans over and starts rocking him again. She’s terrified and more than a little angry, and though she’s not usually a violent person by nature, when she turns her head to try and find the idiot who startled her it’s a genuine struggle not to punch them.

It’s a young woman, dressed a little too formally, with a name tag pinned to her oversized collar. Samantha doesn’t bother to read, just glares at the space between her eyes.

“I don’t know what you were trying to accomplish,” she snaps, “but you’re very lucky we’re outside a hospital right now.”

“Sorry.” She sounds sincere enough, which is a surprise. From Samantha’s experience, people wearing name tags and starched white shirts aren’t usually the type to apologise at all, much less mean it. “I didn’t mean to… it’s just, well… the two of you just looked so adorable… I guess I just, um… well, I guess I just didn’t think.”

Samantha bites back a laugh; she doesn’t trust herself to let the sound out and not sound fragile, and she definitely doesn’t trust this young woman to see her fragile.

“You can say that again,” she mutters; the apology has softened her a little, though, and she ventures a glance at the silly little name tag. “Look, Miss…” She blinks, frowns, reads it again. “… _Snow_? Really?”

Apparently she’s not the first one to raise a brow at that, because the young woman — _Caitlin_ , if the tag is to be believed — shrugs it off with a quick laugh. “Save your breath,” she says. “I’ve heard every bad weather joke in the book. You’ll have to try a bit harder if you want to get me back for startling you.” Her expression shifts, eyes darting down to the baby still snuggled in Samantha’s arms. “Which, sorry about that. Again. Sorry.”

Samantha grimaces; already, she can feel the start of a headache. “Please stop apologising.”

It comes out a little sharper than she intended it to. All this niceness is setting her teeth on edge, and she’s still too new at this to hold her temper and her child at the same time. Caitlin clearly senses this, though not enough to actually do anything about it, because she blushes and blurts out another, “I’m sorry.”

“I heard you the first time,” Samantha sighs. “And the second. And the third. Just… it’s fine. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure? You look a little frazzled. And, well, tired. And you… uh… how do I put it nicely?” She shrugs, and doesn’t even try. “Well, you said you’d drop your baby on its head.”

“ _His_ head,” Samantha corrects. “And that’s not putting it nicely.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to… that is…” She bites her lip for about half a second, then gives up on that as well. “Sorry. Again. I should just… I should go, shouldn’t I? Congratulations on your, um, baby. And, uh…”

“No,” Samantha blurts out; the word comes from out of nowhere, and confuses the hell out of both of them. “I mean, that’s… that’s okay. You don’t have to go. If you don’t want to, I mean. It’s a big enough bench. If you want.”

Caitlin flounders. “Well, that… uh… if you’re sure?”

“Yeah. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too.” It probably doesn’t help much, but it’s easier to swallow when she’s the one saying it. “I… well, I’ve had a long couple of days.”

“I’ll bet.” Caitlin tries to chuckle, but she’s too nervous and it comes out like a gasp. “I mean. a _baby_. At _our_ age.”

That’s kind of presumptuous, Samantha thinks, but she’s too exhausted to say so. “Yes, well, it wasn’t exactly in the five-year plan.”

“Oh.”

It’s just one word, but Caitlin’s entire body deflates with it, like her brain is finally catching up with her mouth, like she’s finally figuring out that maybe things aren’t all sunshine and ill-advised jokes about dropping a newborn baby on its head, like maybe this frazzled, exhausted new mother she’s just accosted is working through some struggles she can’t see.

In a small petty corner of herself, Samantha feels kind of vindicated by the look on her face, the way her mouth twists to shape another wordless apology. It’s a very, very small part of her, though; the rest just wishes that she could go back and undo it all, stop the words before they get out, before Caitlin deflated and got that sad little look on her face.

Caitlin is the first person in nine months who has met her on the street and not treated her like she was made of glass; all those apologies, all that fumbling and stumbling and making a fool out of herself… well, Samantha doesn’t need to be a genius to figure out that that’s just how she is. It helps, knowing she’s not the only one who is awkward and uncomfortable and just plain bad at things that should come naturally. For the first time in entirely too long, it helped her to feel like a person again.

Neither of them say anything for a long while. Caitlin looks like she desperately wants to flee this awkward scene and never look back, but the brief window of appropriateness has closed now and she doesn’t know how to reopen it. Samantha focuses on William, sniffling and snuffling and trying to figure out whether he wants to start crying again or just roll over and go back to sleep. She rocks him a bit, ever so gently, and uses his presence to ground herself, to remind herself why she’s out here in the first place: because she is too afraid to go home.

“Don’t worry,” she says, careful to keep her eyes on the baby and not on Caitlin. “I’m not about to have a meltdown.”

“You sure?” It’s probably a little insensitive, but no more so than anything else that’s come out of her mouth thus far, and Samantha shrugs it off with a nod and a shaky smile. “Okay. Good. Because I am really, _really_ bad at that sort of thing.”

“Really?” A touch of that human feeling comes back again, makes it a bit easier to breathe, and makes the smile feel almost natural. “I never would have guessed.”

Caitlin lets out a real laugh, and finally sits down. “I know, I know,” she says with a sigh. “It’s something I really need to work on. Ideally some time before I finish my doctorate and everyone starts assuming I know what I’m doing.”

It’s strangely comforting, the way she says that, and the way she doesn’t even try to hide the little tremor, the insecurity winding its way through the words. Samantha has never heard someone sound so confident in admitting their weaknesses before, someone so willing to step up and acknowledge all the places where they’ve fallen down. Even now, nine months after the fact, it still hurts like hell to think about her mistakes, the one she made with Oliver and the ones she made after. She’s never had the kind of self-awareness that Caitlin seems to have, the ability to separate herself from her actions; she’s never been able to grasp the concept that maybe her mistakes won’t always define her.

She thinks of the doctors, of their bright smiling faces and they way they always insisted that everything was okay, that it was completely normal and natural to feel like a failure, that she is a mother now and that means she’ll be just fine. She knows that it’s not true, that she’s so far out of her depth that she can’t even see the bottom any more, that she is drowning with a baby on her back. She knows herself better than any of those faceless doctors ever will, but of course that doesn’t matter. They wouldn’t listen to her; they didn’t want to. They just wanted to get her out of bed so that they could move on to the next woman, the next baby, the next stupid mistake with far-reaching consequences.

“Easier said than done,” she says aloud, more to herself than to Caitlin. Still, Caitlin sighs so deeply that it might as well have been a natural part of the conversation. “People always expect you to be better than you are, always expect more than you can give. And then when you don’t, or you can’t, suddenly it’s all your fault.”

Her voice cracks, arms trembling where she’s holding her son, and though she promised this poor woman that she won’t have a meltdown it takes more effort than she’d ever admit to blink back the tears. She hates that, hates that she’s too proud to blame the exhaustion, to blame hormones or the way her system is still recovering from all those awful painkillers, to blame new motherhood or any of the thousand other things, big and small, that go with it. She’s got a thousand excuses all ready-made if she happens to let a tear or two fall, but all she’ll ever allow herself to think or feel is ashamed and stupid, and so, so weak.

Caitlin is staring at her hands, twisting her fingers in her lap. She doesn’t need to voice her agreement; it’s right there on her face, a different kind of shame but one that resonates almost perfectly with what Samantha is going through, that helpless, hopeless feeling that she will never be good enough.

It only takes a glance at that crisp white shirt to know that Caitlin is hardly the type to get randomly knocked up and spend the rest of her life paying for it, but it’s pretty obvious that she has her own troubles, her own demons to face and weaknesses to confess to. Maybe it’s just that time of life for them both, that awkward age where they’re supposed to have everything figured out and every day is a nightmare of realising and remembering that they don’t.

After a long moment, Caitlin turns to look at her. “He is cute,” she says; her smile is watery, though, like Samantha’s own, but she masks it well by waving at William. If nothing else, Samantha thinks, the kid makes for a useful distraction. “I mean, gross. Like, really gross. But cute too. In a scrunchy stinky baby sort of way. You know?”

“Thanks. I, uh, think.”

Caitlin smiles. “So sue me, I’m not a baby person.”

“Neither was I,” Samantha admits, “until I got stuck with one.”

It probably sounds harsh coming from a new mother, but it’s the truth and she won’t shy away from it now any more than she did in the delivery room. Besides, Caitlin doesn’t acknowledge any inappropriateness, and that’s good enough for now. She laughs; it’s a little guarded, like she doesn’t know whether or not she’s really supposed to, but genuine just the same.

“Does he have a name yet?” she asks.

“William.”

It doesn’t feel comfortable just yet, doesn’t fit right in her mouth. She’s still having a hard time thinking of him as anything more than ‘the baby’. It feels safer to see him as _something_ instead of _someone_. She can’t do too much accidental damage to a thing, but a person is something else entirely, and a person with a name is something very, very real. She’s only said the word aloud a handful of times, and it still feels strange and unnatural, its own kind of scary. She wonders if she’ll ever get used to it, if it will ever come easily to her. _William. My son. William._ It makes her heart hurt.

“William,” Caitlin echoes, slow and careful, like she’s testing the weight of it. “How very Norman Invasion.”

Samantha frowns her confusion. “I beg your pardon?”

“You know, William the Conqueror? The Battle of Hastings?” She’s gesturing as she speaks, increasingly uncontrolled with her rising enthusiasm, so Samantha scoots back a bit. “Ten-sixty-six?”

“Oh.” It’s not the first connection she made, to be honest.

Caitlin, seeming to sense that she is two words away from putting her foot back into her mouth, changes her tune. “Well, I mean, that’s… that’s a good thing, right? He’ll be ambitious!”

“Sure. Just what every mother wants for her son.” Her voice breaks on the word _son_ , like it always does. “Good to aim high, I guess. _‘Happy birthday, Mom, I got you a country’_.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” She laughs again, warm and honest, and it diffuses the discomfort. “Well, you never know. Maybe he’ll end up more like… I don’t know, William Tell?”

Samantha isn’t entirely sure that’s any better. “Either way, looks like someone’s getting an arrow through their head.”

It’s not really that far from the truth, if those Queen genes rear their ugly heads. Oliver has done far worse in public, she knows, and she has no doubt that Moira has swept even more under the carpet when no-one was looking. She can’t fight that; if he’s going to turn out like his father or his grandmother, there’s nothing she can do to stop it. The right friends or the wrong kind of trouble, and he’ll be careening down that path just like Oliver did. The only difference will be that she won’t make an undeserving millionaire out of him.

Maybe the other difference is that when he ends up in trouble with some young girl, she’ll be the one taking her side.

“It must be scary,” Caitlin muses, almost to herself. Samantha wonders if she has an off-button. “I mean, it’s hard enough being responsible for your own life, isn’t it? At our age…” She trails off when Samantha flinches, visibly reins in an urge to touch her. “I mean, I’m probably still going to be studying for this stupid doctorate in a _decade_. Meanwhile, you’re making a _person_. And that’s… where do you even start?”

Samantha closes her eyes, feels the panic bubbling in her chest. “By not asking those sorts of questions,” she says, very weakly.

“Oh, right. Sorry. Again.” She takes a deep breath, like she’s trying to steady herself. “I’m not really helping at all, am I?”

For a moment, Samantha is tempted to say, _‘not even a little bit’_. She doesn’t, though, because despite all the evidence it’s not exactly true. At the very least, Caitlin is making the effort, and it’s an odd kind of comforting to meet someone who can look at the mess she’s made of herself and see some levity there, something they can both laugh at.

William is oblivious; he’s fallen back to sleep, gurgling happily to himself. With any luck he won’t ever know that she was scared out of her mind when he was born, that she couldn’t see any light at all, much less the soap-opera glow in his eyes. With any luck she’ll have pulled herself together by the time he’s old enough to really see her, to look up and ask why she’s so sad all the time. With any luck he’ll stay sheltered and protected from moments like this, and he’ll never ever find out that when he was born his mother let herself regret him.

Caitlin might not be helping her to forget that stuff, might even be making it all the more tangible, but at least she’s casting a new kind of light on it. At least she’s making it bearable.

It shouldn’t feel as vindicating as it does, that this young woman with the whole world ahead of her can just saunter through life thinking that a stupid degree is the hardest thing she’ll ever have to deal with. It should make her angry, should feel unfair. Samantha will never get a doctorate now; that she finished college at all was a damn miracle given her condition at the time, and a part of her feels like she should resent Caitlin for not understanding the chasm between them, the beautiful life with letters in front of her name and the great big pin stuck in anything a young single mother might have made of hers.

It doesn’t feel unequal, though. On paper, she knows that it is, but it only takes a look at Caitlin’s face to know that she really does feel just as lost right now, that she really is out of her depth. Ill-advised though it might be, her running at the mouth is harmless, and Samantha has been in that position enough times herself to recognise the insecurities and the discomfort that she’s covering up.

It’s not her place to tell Caitlin that her academic angst doesn’t mean anything, not her place to imply that her newborn son means more than some unspecified doctorate. Saying it, even thinking it, takes her dangerously close to Moira Queen, to obliterating someone else’s suffering for the sake of her son, a son who won’t ever know or care about the poison she’s spreading.

“You’re helping,” she says at last. Saying it makes them both feel better. “Quite a lot, actually. It’s been… like I said, it’s been rough. The birth, the pregnancy… everything, to be honest.” She doesn’t go into details. It’s not important, and in any case she doesn’t trust herself to say the word _‘fatherless’_ and not throw out Oliver’s name. “I think you’re the first person I’ve ever met who feels as helpless as I do.”

Caitlin laughs. “Ever? Really?”

Probably not, but it really does feel that way sometimes. It’s astonishing, when she thinks about it, just how isolated she’s become since she got knocked up, since she came to Central City and threw herself into her studies and locked herself away. Shame, probably, or a generic inability to cope… or else maybe there’s some messed-up part of her that’s afraid to let anyone else in; after all, it didn’t exactly turn out well the last time, did it? For all the mistakes she knows she’ll make over the course of William’s life, she can at least make sure she doesn’t repeat that one.

“I don’t get out much,” she mumbles, and hopes that Caitlin doesn’t pry further.

She doesn’t, blessedly, just grins and sighs. “Believe me, I get that.”

To her own surprise, Samantha actually does believe her. It’s easy to trust in the words when the truth of them is written all over her face, when she recognises with painful intimacy those stress lines, the exhaustion and the embarrassment of not being the right sort of person, of not being a social butterfly and an academic genius at the same time. Caitlin might not have the ghosts of the Queen family at her back, might not have a child to raise all alone, might not have ruined her life in the same way that Samantha has, but she’s struggling too. And, yeah, she really does get it.

Samantha musters a smile, changes tack. She feels like she has to, like she needs to give something back to this poor woman who is in no better place than she herself is.

“So,” she says, as clumsy and graceless as anything Caitlin has said. “A doctorate, huh?”

Caitlin snorts, amusement tinged with strain. “Masochistic, right?”

“A little.” Samantha shakes her head. “I can hardly imagine. I mean, at least pregnancy’s over in nine months.”

“You can say that again,” Caitlin mutters, and laughs again. It’s strangled, the broken, desperate laugh of someone who knows she’ll cry if she doesn’t. Samantha is intimately acquainted with that laugh.

She looks down at William. He’s stirring a little, fidgety even in his sleep, and she knows she ought to take him home. She can’t put it off forever, can’t hide from the real world for the rest of her life; one day soon he’ll start his, and it’s down to her to prepare him for it, to make sure he has the best start.

She’s still not sure how she’s going to do that, how she’s supposed to prepare a young boy for the world ahead without a father figure to guide him when things get too testosterone-y, when he grows up and flashes Oliver’s smile or starts walking the same path as him, when he starts doing all those things she’s so afraid of. It’s so much to take in, so much to prepare for, but whether she likes it or not, she’s pretty sure that getting him into a crib is the first step.

“Hey,” she says, turning to Caitlin as she stands. It’s not much of a parting gift, but it’s all she has. “Keep it up, okay? The doctorate, I mean. If anything happens to him and we end up back here, I want to know he’ll be in good hands.”

Caitlin frowns. “It’s not that kind of…” She trails off, though, with the kind of sigh that says she’s made this distinction a thousand times this week alone. Samantha doesn’t point out that she’s well aware, that of course she understands the difference between a doctor and a _doctor_. That’s not what this is about, and for all her lack of tact in other departments Caitlin seems to get that as well. “You know what? Never mind. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Smiling is hard, but not as hard as it was a few minutes ago. Not as hard as it has been for the last nine months. She’s still not ready for any of this, and she knows that the instant she’s home alone with her son — with _William_ — she’ll get sucked into that spiral of negative thoughts, the pervasive panic and the never-ending questions and self-doubt, the _I can’t do this_ and _I’m not a mother_ , the paranoia of looking over her shoulder and expecting to see one of Moira’s private investigators, the humiliation of switching on the television and seeing another of Oliver’s misdemeanours, the self-loathing when she holds William in her arms and thinks, _‘that’s where you come from’_.

It’s waiting for her, all of it, and she knows that as soon as she gets home, as soon as William is safe in his crib and out of her arms, it will all come crashing down on top of her. She hasn’t let it hit her yet, not really, not with doctors and nurses and whatever else swarming around, but she knows that it will happen as soon as she’s alone and has both hands free. It’s inevitable, and that makes it all the more important to take moments like this for what they are, to welcome the moments when smiling is a little easier, to try and offer a little of the same in return, to help a worn-out struggling doctorate student feel the same way.

They’ll both have to face their problems eventually, but for the time being it helps to make things easier, to support each other in whatever small ways they can. Even if it’s just to provide a safe outlet for Caitlin’s academic foot-in-mouth ramblings, even if it’s just to remind Samantha that there are other people out there feeling as lost and unprepared as she does, even if those things all amount to nothing, at least right now they’re a whole lot more. For now, at least, it’s made things a little less real, and that makes them just a little less scary too.

“I should get him home,” The segue is clumsy, and probably a little unnecessary, but it’s worth it for the way Caitlin looks as reluctant as Samantha feels. “Got to face the place some time.”

“My thesis and I will pretend we didn’t hear that,” Caitlin says, but there’s a fond look on her face just the same, like maybe it’s not as much as a nightmare any more for her any more either.

Samantha shifts William onto her shoulder, balances him awkwardly to try and offer a hand. “Good luck with your doctorate.”

“Thanks.” Caitlin smiles, and shakes her hand with a startlingly strong grip. “Good luck with your, uh, baby.”

Samantha has to laugh at the thinly-veiled horror in the word, like Caitlin still can’t fathom how someone as young as they are could have a child already, could be raising him all on her own, could be navigating her way through an already-messy world with another life in her arms. She has to laugh at it, because if she doesn’t she’ll cry; she’ll think of Oliver again, of all the little things she’s scared of and all the bigger things looming on the horizon, of all the ways her little boy might grow up to embody the words things in all of them. She has to laugh, because it’s the only thing she has to keep her brave.

“We’ll be fine,” she says.

What she doesn’t say is that she doesn’t have a choice.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

**2007**

*

William is crying when the news breaks over the radio.

They’re in the kitchen; Samantha is tearing up a lettuce, and he’s on the floor kicking his feet and bawling his eyes out because he’s not allowed to play with it. He’s just shy of a year, at that awkward age where everything he sees is a potential plaything, and she has fallen just about hard enough for his charms and his smiles and his babbling sort-of words that most of the time she’ll just sit back and let him get away with it. She draws the line at foodstuffs and electrical outlets, though, and boy does he hate that. It’s painfully predictable, she supposes; stubbornness runs in both of his families.

He’s wailing so loudly that she almost misses the broadcast, the reporter’s voice half-drowned by static and white noise. She catches it in bits and pieces, fractured words like _‘breaking news’_ and _‘shipwreck’_ and _‘presumed dead’_ and she doesn’t think to pay attention until they start reeling off names, until the words cut through the noise and the nonsense and every other thought in her head.

_“…Starling City billionaire Robert Queen… his son Oliver…”_

Her hand flies to her mouth. The lettuce falls to the floor, forgotten, and William wastes no time in smashing the poor thing to smithereens. He’s delighted, tears trailing off into a symphony of delighted squeals, but Samantha doesn’t even notice; her whole world has dissolved into a single horrified point, the thrum of radio static and the announcer’s voice as the broadcast repeats again and again and again.

Robert Queen, dead. _Oliver_ , dead. 

William, giggling to himself on the floor, has no idea that he’s just lost his father and grandfather in one fell swoop.

She braces against the counter, struggles in vain to catch her breath. Her vision is blurring, chest heaving; for a horrible second or two, she worries that she’s going to pass out. She hasn’t thought about Oliver or his family in nearly a year, hasn’t let herself regret or wonder or think; she put that behind her when she brought him home, laid him down in his crib, and closed the curtains on the world outside. She never expected for a second that she’d find herself dragged back here.

William looks up at her, wide-eyed and confused, like he senses something wrong but he’s too young to figure out what or why or how.

“Mama?” he chirps, because that’s about the only cohesive word he’s capable of. He reaches up with both hands, crushing lettuce leaves between his chubby fingers, like all he wants in the world is to help. It takes everything she has not to burst into tears right there.

She crouches in front of him, in equal parts because she can’t hold herself upright any more and because she needs to be close to him. She takes his face in her hands, tilts his head up until she can look him in the eyes. His are bright and beautiful, always so clear and so expressive; they’re nothing like hers. She can’t remember Oliver’s eyes well enough to know if they’re his but she supposes they must be; if they’re not hers, they must have come from somewhere, and it strikes harder than it should to realise that she’ll never be able to check.

Funny. Until this moment, she had no intention of ever laying eyes on him again. Now that he’s dead, suddenly it’s all she can think of.

“Mama’s here,” she says to William, grateful that he’s too young to notice the hitch in her voice or understand what it means. “Mama’s right here, okay?”

She pulls him close, hugs him as tightly as she can, and doesn’t even care that there’s lettuce all over the floor, that the place is a mess and she’ll have to clean it up. The poor kid has no idea what the hell is going on, of course, but he doesn’t much care either. He never cares about anything; so long as he gets food and toys and attention, the world could turn itself upside-down and he wouldn’t notice at all. Right now, Samantha would give anything to be so young and so innocent.

It’s strange, and kind of surreal. She’s a lifetime away from that one stupid night, a different city and what feels like a whole new identity. She’s a completely different person now, and she’d had every reason to assume that would never have any kind of contact with the Queen family again. Coming out here, starting afresh in Central City, she naturally assumed that she was safe, out of their reach; honestly, she’d assumed that Oliver was safe as well, protected in his little millionaire’s bubble, oblivious to the fact that there’s a little boy out there with his genes and probably his eyes.

It was supposed to be forever, the way they cut ties. It was always supposed to be forever, even before the distance and the decision and everything else; back when it was just an awkward one-night-stand and they said goodbye with ducked heads the following day. It was supposed to be the last time they ever spoke, the last time their paths crossed. Fate had other plans, of course, but after the look on his face when she told him, the look on Moira’s when they talked, she knew it had to be; one way or another, she needed to cut herself away from him for good.

This is different, though. All of a sudden it feels so real, so final and so completely out of her hands; she can hardly breathe through the clash of feelings. It’s like a kind of grief, a sick horror she wasn’t prepared for. It doesn’t make any sense, she knows, but she can’t stop it.

It’s one thing not to want Oliver to be a part of her life or her child’s, knowing as they both did that he would sooner throw himself off a building than settle down with some girl and an unwanted lovechild, knowing as she did what Moira and her resources could do if she dared to make a stand against them. It’s one thing to know all of that, to accept the truth of it, hard and hurtful though it was, to choose it and make it her life, but it’s another thing entirely to have the choice taken away, to know that it’s out of her hands now. Oliver is dead, gone, and William will never even know that he existed.

Briefly, stupidly, she thinks about telling him. Here and now with the news still ringing in her ears, while he’s too young to understand what it means. It’s tempting, almost painfully so, to get it out of the way while she can, choke it out now while it’s easy so that it won’t hurt quite as much in ten or fifteen years’ time when they have this conversation all over again.

She’s about two breaths away from doing it when he stops her, cutting her off before before she can find the courage; it’s like he knows, like some part of him senses the hard truths inside of her. He throws his arms around her neck, presses his face against her shoulder, and mumbles her name again, soft and sweet like the prettiest kind of lullaby. _“Mama,”_ hazy and sleepy, and she can feel his limbs loosening as he leans into her, his eyelids fluttering against her skin.

She closes her eyes, rocks him gently in her arms, knowing all too well that he’ll be fast asleep long before she finds the strength to stand back up, to carry him back to his room and set him down. He’s always like this, a livewire while he’s awake and then out cold in less than a heartbeat, almost before either of them realise he’s getting tired at all. He burns himself out so fast, just like his mother.

She doesn’t trust herself to stand, wouldn’t even if she wasn’t holding him, so she just sits there on the kitchen floor, cradling him and whispering snatches of songs, too numb to move and too touched to let him go.

He was never Oliver’s child, she reminds herself. Not in any way that meant anything; he is hers, and always will be, and this shouldn’t matter at all. It shouldn’t sting, shouldn’t cut, and it definitely shouldn’t feel like grief; honestly, it should just make the whole sordid situation a million times easier. There’s an answer now, simple and ready-made, for the moment when he finally asks the question she’s been dreading. _‘Your father died in an accident when you were a baby,’_ she’ll say, and it will be true.

She doesn’t have to lie any more. Not for her sake, not for William or Oliver or anyone else. It’s the best possible solution to a messy, complicated problem, and if she was just a fraction more vindictive, she might even be thankful.

She’s not, though. For all her sins, she could never be that.

She thinks about Moira. It turns her stomach, even just imagining that there might be something similar between them, but it turns her heart far more to wonder what that poor woman must be going through right now. How would it feel, she wonders, if she was in her place, losing her son and her husband and learning through some anonymous radio broadcast?

She’ll never understand the kind of twisted thinking that would make a person do the things that Moira did, but nobody deserves that kind of pain. No parent should ever have to bury their child, much less at the same time as her husband, and it’s a frenzied kind of terror that makes Samantha pull William even closer, hold him so tightly that he sighs and squirms and twitches himself awake.

Even hazy and lidded with sleep, his eyes are still so bright; she kisses them, blinking back tears from her own, and wishes that she could remember Oliver’s.

 _Daddy’s dead,_ she thinks, but when she tries to put it into words, all she can bring herself to say is, “Mommy’s here.”

—

A week later, absolutely positive that she’s lost her mind, she finds herself on Moira Queen’s doorstep.

She hasn’t stopped thinking about it, hasn’t stopped seeing Oliver’s face when William smiles at her, hasn’t stopped imagining what Moira must be going through, what she must be feeling. It’s kept her awake, kept her distracted and preoccupied, kept her from doing any of the hundred thousand things she needs to be doing in any given moment, raising her child or working herself to the bone to give him the life he deserves. She can’t stop hearing that news report in her head, can’t shake the careless, casual way they reeled off their names.

It’s beyond stupid, coming back here, but at least this time it’s not dangerous. No-one would think twice about another nameless face showing up to offer their condolences to poor grieving Mrs Queen; Oliver was a popular young man, especially among the young women of Starling City, and Samantha has a suspicion that the doorbell has been ringing itself half to death just trying to keep up with their numbers. No doubt Moira is sick and tired by now of well-meaning well-wishers, but that’s not going to stop her. It’s too late for her to start questioning her own choices, but it’s not too late to question someone else’s.

She recognises the maid who answers the door, the woman who brought her to Moira’s side the last time she was here. _Raisa_ ; she remembers hearing the name on Moira’s tongue, cold as ice and utterly impersonal, like she didn’t even see the poor woman at all. Samantha wonders if Raisa knows all of the sick things that go on in this house, if she’s aware of the dirty money passing hands at all hours of the day and night, the scheming and cruelty. She wonders if this poor obedient maid has the least suspicion that the bouncing baby boy in her guest’s arms is Master Oliver’s son.

For a woman in mourning, Moira looks strangely comfortable, even regal. She’s dressed in black, of course, her face artfully pale, but her features are lineless and perfect, like she hasn’t been crying at all. It’s unnerving, yet somehow not surprising in the least. This is every inch the Moira Queen Samantha remembers, the one who went behind her son’s back to fix his life, who bribed the woman carrying his child into conveniently disappearing from both of theirs.

Needless to say, she is not so unaffected. Her eyes narrow, though she keeps a remarkable poker face, and when she speaks it’s as clipped and formal as ever. Perfectly practiced; she expected nothing less.

“I must say…” The words are a warning. “You’re the last person I’d expect to offer your condolences.”

Samantha bites her tongue, reminds herself that Moira is in mourning, in spirit if not in appearance. Tempting though it might be to lift her lips into a crafty little smile and say _‘oh? why is that?’_ , she doesn’t. She’s not here to antagonise or to be needlessly cruel; for all their differences Moira is going through enough right now. She’s here to do the right thing, or at least to make a feint at it, whether or not that’s something Moira Queen would welcome, or even comprehend.

“It seemed appropriate,” she says, choosing her words very carefully. “Oliver and I… well, as you know, we were…”

“Oh, I’m quite familiar with your acquaintance with my late son.” Her lips curl ever so slightly, and Samantha doesn’t miss the way her eyes fall on William. “As _you_ know.”

She does, yes, but she won’t let this get awkward. “Look, Mrs Queen, I just thought—”

“Oh, yes.” She cuts her off with a careless wave; as ever, she has no interest in hearing what anyone else has to say. “It was very thoughtful of you to come all this way to express your sympathies to a woman you’ve met exactly once.” She musters a thin smile, eyes narrowing a little more. “How is Central City these days?”

It’s a loaded question, pointed and very dangerous. Samantha knows why she’s asking, of course, what she’s really getting at. For all that a million dollars is loose change to someone like Moira Queen, she can’t be unaware that it hasn’t left her account; she’s testing, pushing and prying for her motivation, trying to figure out where the angle is in all of this. Her investigators can’t help her now, and she can’t very well ask the question out here in the lobby, so she’s fishing for something that will give it away, some subtle reaction, some twitch or flinch, something she can exploit.

Well, Samantha thinks, she can push and pry all she wants; she won’t get anything out of her. The plain fact is, neither one of them has any leverage now, so there’s no point in playing power games. Moira’s threats and cheques are utterly impotent with Oliver gone, and even if Samantha was the sort of person to shoot her mouth off at a grieving widow, what in the world would she have to gain from it?

“It’s good,” she says, and holds her head up high. “Peaceful.”

William wriggles in her arms, restless and cranky, and she hushes him with a kiss to his forehead. Moira studies them curiously; she’s holding fast to that priceless poker face, but Samantha doesn’t miss the way her eyes crinkle at the edges.

“And who is this handsome young man?”

Samantha bites her tongue again, harder this time. _You know,_ she thinks. _You know perfectly well who he is. You just want to hear me say it._

“He’s my son.” Her voice is tight, strained. She’s never had to play these games, and she’s very bad at them. “His name is William.”

“William,” Moira echoes, humming in her throat like she’s trying to decide whether or not she approves. Apparently she does, because after a moment she nods and allows the faintest trace of a smile. “A fine choice, if I may say so. A strong name.”

Samantha doesn’t say that it has to be, that _he_ has to be. She just shrugs and says, “Mrs Queen.”

Moira ignores her. “I take it he’s provided for?”

That’s another loaded question, and it grates against her nerves. It’s a fancy, self-righteous way of bringing up the stupid cheque, of subtly demanding to know whether she has any intention of cashing it in the near future. As if it matters, as if Moira couldn’t put a stop to the transfer in a heartbeat if she really wanted to. 

Samantha couldn’t care less either way; she had no intention of cashing the thing before and she has no intention of doing so now. It makes her angry that Moira thinks it’s her place to ask these things, that she truly seems to believe she has any right to worry about the grandchild she was so eager to whisk under the table.

“I provide for him,” she says, and lets a little acid into her voice.

Moira’s smile gets just a little bit thinner. “Oh, I’m sure you do.”

There’s weight behind the words, like she wants to make it a threat but doesn’t really have the conviction to follow through any more. It’s like she doesn’t know how to react to any of this, doesn’t know how to read Samantha or her presence here; it’s probably the first time in a very long time that anyone has gotten the great Moira Queen on her toes, and if she was just a little more prone to cruelty Samantha might be a little proud of herself for that.

She’s not, though; she’s just as uncomfortable as Moira seems to be. It’s too late for either one of them to repair things now, too late to give William the life he should have had from the beginning, too late to take back either of their choices or their consequences. Moira knows that as well as Samantha does, but if she has any regrets about the way things played out the last time they stood here like this there’s no hint of it on her face.

Before her common sense has a chance to kick in and send her running for the door, Samantha hears herself blurt out, “Can we speak in private?”

Moira stares at her for a long moment; oddly, she seems considerably less surprised by the request than Samantha is, which is embarrassing given that she’s the one who said it. Moira’s eyebrows are as flawless as the rest of her, perfect pencil-thin lines knitting together as she measures the lines on Samantha’s face, gauges her expression, her voice, every part of her she can see. It feels invasive, like they’ve known each other for all their lives, like she knows all of her darkest secrets.

She probably does, in truth. Stomach turning, Samantha recalls their last meeting, remembers the look on Moira’s face when she produced that awful dossier, that great big folder full of information about her. This woman probably knows her shoe size, her SAT scores, her college major, even her dental records. Hell, she probably knows more about her than her own mother.

It’s an unpleasant recollection, an unwanted reminder of the fact that Oliver might be out of the picture but that doesn’t take away all of Moira’s power. It makes her uncomfortable, makes her feel ill, and maybe William senses a little of that because he starts fussing again, wriggling and struggling in her arms. He’s starting to whimper as well, and she’s pretty sure he’s heading towards a tantrum. Naturally, that’s the last thing in the world she needs right now.

Blessedly, Moira stops staring before William has a chance to go into meltdown. She nods, curt and polite and playing the perfect hostess, and guides her without preamble into a quiet side-room.

It’s a new room this time, different to the cozy lounge-space they shared the last time she was here. Samantha tries not to look too hard at the carpet or the wallpaper, tries not to think about the fact that a single strip of the stuff could probably feed her and William for a year. She doesn’t need this place, doesn’t need its blood money, and she definitely doesn’t need the way Moira is watching her, eyes and smile sharp as blades, like she’s expecting her to start holding her to ransom.

Naturally, Moira doesn’t give her a chance to say her piece. She cuts her off with a hand, and bursts into a speech she’s clearly been rehearsing from the moment she saw her face.

“Listen to me,” she says, eyes flashing. “I have just lost my husband, and my son. My daughter has just lost her father and her brother. My family is shattered, and everyone in this house is in mourning. Whatever it is you expect to accomplish by coming here, let me assure you—”

“I don’t want anything,” Samantha blurts out; the urgency in her voice, close to desperation, stuns them both. She detests this woman, detests this whole family, but she will go to hell a hundred times over before she lets any one of them think she’s as cold or as calculating as they are. “I didn’t take your money the last time I was here. What makes you think I would take anything you’d give me now?”

Moira’s lips twitch a little, like maybe there’s a part of her that wants to believe her. She won’t, of course; she’s so used to being taken advantage of that she can’t imagine such a thing as good intentions. In another universe, a million light-years away from this one, Samantha might almost feel sorry for her. _Almost_.

“All right,” Moira says after a moment; she still doesn’t sound convinced, but at least she looks like she’s willing to listen. “Then why don’t you tell me why you are here? You can’t really expect me to believe you came all this way just to offer your condolences.”

It’s tempting to say that yes, that’s exactly what she did, to shrug and shake her hand and say that she’s sorry for Moira’s loss, then just turn around and walk away like it’s nothing out of the ordinary. This house is toxic, lethal; she’d all but forgotten that until she found herself face-to-face with the woman who made the biggest decision of her life for her. She’d all but forgotten just how much of a horror movie the Queens’ world is, all but forgotten her countless reasons for keeping William out of it in the first place.

Still, though, she won’t back down. Heaven help her, she’s too stubborn. William is fidgeting again, making pitiful little noises, and before she even realises what she’s doing she steps forward and says, “Can you hold him for a second?”

Moira stares at her like she’s just asked the woman to light her own head on fire. She opens her mouth, no doubt to interrogate her again, but William cuts her off before she can get a word out, flailing his arms and reaching out to her.

That’s nothing new, though it leaves Samantha with a bad taste in her mouth. He’s curious, enthralled by the tall pretty stranger with the odd smile, and of course Moira can’t resist him. No-one can.

He’s not really a social child, at least not yet, and he’s certainly not the kind to stumble up to anyone he meets and babble until they tell him how adorable he is, but he’s as curious as anyone she’s ever known. Everything is a source of intrigue, a puzzle to be solved, and every new person is a world of questions to feel out for answers; he will spend hours on end just staring at people, watching them and trying to figure them out. For all his shyness, he’s incredibly tactile, and when his curiosity gets the better of him he just has to touch things _now_.

Once that happens, Moira’s a goner. Just like Samantha, just like everyone William meets, she’s sucked into his smile, his chubby hands, his flailing arms. She takes him into her arms like it’s second nature, like she’s a born nurturer — difficult to believe, given what Samantha knows about her, but there it is, right in front of her — and there’s no masking the smile on her face when his restless whimpers dissipate into delighted giggles.

“He’s quite the charmer,” she murmurs, seemingly against her will. William nestles into her arms like he belongs there, like he knows she’s his grandmother, and it’s hard to tell which of the two are more overjoyed. “He’ll break a lot of hearts one day.”

 _He will if he’s like his father,_ Samantha thinks, but she’s not so tactless as to say that here and now. Instead, she says, “I hope I’ll raise him better than that,” and lets that say it all.

“Of course you will,” Moira deadpans; there’s malice in the words, but her voice can’t hold it up; she can’t seem to take her eyes off William, can’t seem to stop smiling. “Because it’s just so _easy_ to raise a child perfectly, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t.” She still won’t look at her. “You don’t say a lot of things. If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re rather good at that.”

Samantha sighs. “Look, I just thought you’d like to meet him.” It’s a frenzied rush, heavy with the truth, and she regrets it almost before she’s said it. “That’s all, okay? No ulterior motives, no power games, no manipulation. I’m not like you. I will _never_ be like you. But after what you’ve been through, I thought…”

She trails off, suddenly self-conscious, but it’s enough to get Moira’s attention. She still can’t bring herself to look up, too enamoured with her grandson to tear her eyes off him, but there’s no mistaking the way her shoulders tighten, the surprise that flashes across her face in the half-second before that radiant faux-maternal smile washes it all away again. She’s surprised, enough that she actually lets it show for a moment. It’s probably been a long time since someone did something nice for her simply because it was the right thing to do. Tragic, really.

“I see,” she says, very softly.

“It’s the truth,” Samantha says, as protective of her motives as her child. “He’ll never get a chance to meet his father. I can’t change that now, and I wouldn’t even if I could. We both know that it is… that it _was_ for the best.” She wants to add, _‘I didn’t need your blood money to know that,’_ but she doesn’t. “I don’t want you, any of you, in William’s life. I don’t want you anywhere near him. You’ll never see either of us again after today. But you… _this_ …”

She flounders, struggling as she always does with big words. It’s a problem of hers, one she really should work on before William is old enough to understand her; she’s always doing this, opening her mouth before she stops to think about where it might take her, and of course Moira is an expert in dealing with people just like her, perfectly equipped to take advantage of the spaces between her words. She doesn’t give Samantha a chance to dig herself out, or even to dig herself deeper; she simply jumps in with her usual elegance, smiles, and makes it all look so easy.

“You could learn a thing or two about elocution,” she observes, like that’s the only thing to take from that.

Samantha ignores her. She will not be swayed by Moira, not again. “Look, Mrs Queen, I’m just trying to do the right thing here. You’ve lost your son, but Oliver didn’t lose his. I thought it might…”

_I thought it might ease the grieving process; no mother should ever have to bury their son. I thought it might give both of us some closure, some peace of mind, some... I don’t know, something. I thought… I thought…_

But the words still won’t come. She could say any of those things, and they would all be true enough, but they’re all too tender, too compassionate; now that she’s here again, looking up at this woman who changed her life, she can’t for the life of her remember why she ever thought someone like Moira deserved them.

“With all due respect, my dear,” Moira quips archly, “I’m not entirely convinced you have any idea what you thought.” She keeps her tone uncharacteristically venom-free, though, like she’s trying to soften in spite of herself. “Regardless, and whatever you may or may not think of me, I do appreciate the gesture. As a mother yourself… well, I’m sure you can imagine what a nightmare this has been.”

She can imagine it, yes. And maybe that’s it, or at least some small part of it; she’s still not really sure what possessed her to come here, to make this stupid overture, but she knows that every time she’s thought of Moira in the last week her chest has seized and squeezed and tightened until she couldn’t breathe. It’s one thing for William to lose the father he never knew he had, but it’s something else entirely to think of vindictive, spiteful Moira Queen and imagine what it must feel like to lose the son she would have literally paid any price to protect.

“Yes,” she says, and wonders why it feels like she’s surrendering so much more than the word. “Yes, I can imagine.”

“Mm.” Moira leans forward, her whole body softening as she cradles William in her arms. “He has my Oliver’s eyes.”

It’s deliberate, the way she says _‘my’_ , like a reminder that no matter the distance between them, no matter how hard Samantha tries or how far she runs, some part of William will always belong to this family, and to Moira.

She thinks about taking her son back and running away right then and there, putting that threat to the test and seeing just how far Moira is willing to chase her. It’s tempting, but of course she knows that’s just what Moira wants her to do; in a twisted, point-proving sort of way, it would be a victory for her. So, no, she holds her ground, stands there with her shoulders straight and her jaw aching from the effort of biting her tongue.

“Maybe he does,” she concedes, very quietly. “But that’s all he has of him.”

Finally, Moira looks up, meets her gaze without flinching. “As I told you the last time we met,” she says, “we do whatever it takes to provide for our children. Perhaps now that you have a son of your own, you’ll be a fraction more understanding of my motivation when it came to protecting mine.”

The words say one thing, but her face says something else entirely; she looks genuinely sad, almost regretful. For the first time, Samantha wonders if things might have played out differently between them last time, if either one of them had known that it would end like this.

“Mrs Queen…”

“Now, now, dear. I’m sure you want me say that I’ve seen the error of my ways, that my behaviour the last time we spoke was harsh and unreasonable, that if I had my time again I would do things differently. But we both know that’s not going to happen. I stand by my actions. And I trust that, when you find yourself forced to make similar unpleasant choices for your son, you will stand by yours as well.”

“I’ll never do what you did,” Samantha says, voice hitching. “Not ever.”

“Of course you won’t.” 

She takes a step forward, just one, and hands William back without ceremony. He doesn’t settle in Samantha’s arms the way he did in Moira’s, though; he fusses and whines like he always does when he’s gotten comfortable and someone tries to move him somewhere else, when he imagines he’s found a new friend and then he’s forced back into the familiar boredom of his mother’s arms. He’s sullen now, and the corners of Moira’s lips tremble ever so slightly, eyes wet with nostalgia and the deepest grief Samantha has ever seen.

“He likes you,” she says, and hates the fact that it’s true.

Moira, in a rare moment of compassion, shakes her head. “Oh, I’m sure he just appreciated the light playing off my earrings,” she says. “If he’s anything like his father, he’ll be ‘ooh’ing and ‘aah’ing over pretty sparkly things for the rest of his life.” Neither of them smile, and Moira’s lips twist down a little as she says it. “In any event, I imagine you have precisely seven seconds before the tantrum begins…”

That’s true, and if anyone else had said it Samantha might have laughed. She doesn’t, though, because it’s Moira and she can insist all she wants that she’s not afraid of her, that she’s the one with the upper hand this time, but it only takes a second to remember that if this woman had the least inclination she could destroy her life and her son’s. She also doesn’t laugh because it stings, the pointed reminder that, whatever she might say to the contrary, he has taken on so much more than Oliver’s eyes.

She kisses William on the forehead. It soothes him for maybe a tenth of a second.

“I should go,” she says, more thankful than she will ever admit for the excuse. “Before he starts.”

She’s not sure what she expects from Moira, but it’s definitely not approval. There’s a strange look on her face when Samantha finds the courage to look up and meet her eye; for the first time since this whole thing started, she really does look like a woman in mourning, a woman who has lost her husband and her only son, a woman who has just met the grandchild she gave away, who will take to the grave the knowledge that it’s too late to make things right. She’s not crying — she would never let anyone see that, least of all Samantha — but there’s no mistaking the haze behind her eyes, or the way her lips are trembling. Emotion, so raw and so brutal that even her millionaire’s make-up isn’t enough to cover it up.

“My offer still stands,” she murmurs, then immediately flinches; it’s like she blurted it out without thinking, like she didn’t even realise she was thinking it until she’d already said it. “I realise that circumstances have changed for both of us, but I am a woman of my word, and I—”

“So am I,” Samantha mutters, automatically.

Moira, unaccustomed to interruption, shoots her a sharp glare. “I am a woman of my word,” she says again, pointedly this time. “And I intend to honour my end of our bargain, should you ever find yourself in need.”

She’s talking about the cheque, Samantha knows, and her stomach turns. “I don’t—”

“ _Pride_ ,” Moira snaps, cutting her off, “is an admirable trait, my dear girl. But don’t let it blind you to your needs… or those of your son.”

“My son will never need your blood money,” she snaps hotly. “And neither will I.”

“We all need a little help sometimes,” Moira says archly, voice dripping acid, like even free advice comes at a great cost. “The offer remains, should such a moment arise, and without condition. I am not in the habit of seeing my family go without.”

The sad part is, she truly believes that this is generosity, that it’s kindness. She truly thinks that she’s doing them a favour, securing the future of the grandson she never wanted and never imagined she’d see again. She really, truly expects Samantha to be flattered by the offer, to be thankful and touched by the idea that she’s still free to cash a bribe she rejected before her son was even born. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so damn insulting, and it makes Samantha turn away, spinning on her heels fast enough that William starts bawling.

“He’s not your family,” she says, grateful that his tears drown hers. “And he never will be.”

—

Back at home, she spends the afternoon staring at that stupid cheque.

William is out cold. That’s no surprise, really; he threw a ten-minute tantrum on the homebound journey then promptly fell asleep the instant they were through they door, and she hasn’t heard a peep out of him since. He’s always like this, pushing himself past his limits then realising a moment or two too late that his little body can’t handle it. Most days it’s adorable and exhausting by turns; today she’s just thankful for the peace and quiet. Her thoughts are too loud deal with him as well, and it is such a blessing that he’s always fast asleep when she’s too weak to be the mother he deserves.

It’s an odd feeling. A few dozen odd feelings, all tangled around each other. Grief, sort of. Compassion, without a doubt. Regret, yes, but it’s twisted and gnarled, inching its way towards anger.

It was a bad idea, going back to that place, holding her head up and looking that awful woman in the eye. A bad idea, absolutely, but she did it as much for herself as it for Moira. As much for Oliver, in a sad sort of way, not that he’ll ever know; she’s grateful for that, if nothing else. Oliver will never know the sort of person his mother is, the sort of things she did without a second thought. He’ll never know the sort of person his son will become either, and the more she lets herself think about it the more she realises she’s glad for that as well.

 _“He has my Oliver’s eyes,”_ Moira said to her, and Samantha’s blood ran cold like it did in the delivery room, like it did when she looked down at her newborn son for the first time and prayed that she would not see any trace of him.

It’s hard not to ball her fists, crumple up the stupid blood-money cheque and finally find the strength and courage to throw it away. It’s the last revenant of this awful chapter in her life — in _William’s_ life — and all she has to do is toss it into the trash and it will all be over. In theory, at least, she won’t have to think about Oliver or Moira Queen ever again.

In theory, yes. In practice, she knows it’s not that simple. It should be, but it’s not.

Maybe it’s the regret that compels her to keep the stupid thing. She feels nothing but pain and shame when she thinks back to her dalliance with Oliver, and nothing but nausea when she thinks about Moira and the ice in her eyes and her spite and her blackmail. She wants to protect William from all of that, from the destructive young man his father was before he died, from the dangerous woman his grandmother still is, and most of all from the awful mistakes his mother made.

William doesn’t need to know where he came from; any hope of that particular secret getting unearthed died on that fancy yacht with his father. He’ll never know the viper’s nest that spawned him, the venom and the viciousness that tainted the months before he was born. He doesn’t need to know any of it, but Samantha does. She made those choices and those mistakes; she lived that life, and she won’t allow herself the freedom of ignorance that she’s giving him. She won’t allow herself to shirt responsibility, to slip into complacency and forget where it leads.

She won’t turn out like Moira Queen, so eager to sweep her son’s mistakes under the carpet that she never taught him not to make them in the first place. She won’t let William turn out like Oliver, sleeping around and beating the life out of anyone who gets in his way, swaggering and strutting and assuming the whole world is his playground. She won’t let her life or her son’s mirror the world they got away from. She has to remind herself, every single day, what that world is like, and why it is so important.

Her mistakes are her own, and she will protect him from them with her life, but when the day comes where he starts to make his own, she has to remember that they are his. She has to remember that he has to live with them, that she can’t step in and wash them away like Moira did with Oliver’s. She’ll protect him from the whole damn world if she has to, but there are some things he has to learn for himself, some things he’ll have to pay for. She won’t ruin someone else’s life for his.

That stupid blood-money cheque will remind her of that, the danger and the cost of writing off someone else’s mistakes. None of them will ever know what kind of a father Oliver Queen might have been, whether he would have stepped up and taken responsibility or denied it all and run away; they will never know what kind of a man that self-involved playboy might have grown into, and that’s something they’ll both have to live with.

Moira will never know if her arrogant brat of a son would have ever found a place for himself in the real world, if he would ever have become someone she could be proud of. That’s all right for her; she seems to prefers it that way. But it’s not all right for Samantha, and she wants more for William than to spend his whole life waiting for her to clean up after him. She doesn’t have the stamina, and anyway he deserves her faith. It breaks her heart that Moira will never know how much something like that worth.

So, then. Moira knows that her grandson has his father’s eyes; let her take what small comfort she likes in that. Samantha knows that she will not allow him to inherit anything more than that. A cleansing, if a bitter one, for both of them.

It’s a long time before she finds the strength to drag herself back to the present, to tuck the cheque and the past back into its drawer to gather dust. It’s a long time, much longer than she should have taken, but she gets there in the end. She knows who she is, she knows where her son comes from, and she knows what she will never, ever allow either one of them to become.

It’s enough, at least, that maybe now she can finally move on.

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

**2012**

*

The next time she hears Oliver’s name, she almost chokes to death.

She snd William are at the coffee place, Jitters, squirrelled away in a little corner booth. She picked him up from kindergarten maybe ten minutes ago and he’s still vibrating, hyper-energised and excitable. It’s become something of a routine to stop by for a hot chocolate afterwards, as much to calm him down as anything else, though the quality coffee is its own kind of incentive for a run-down single mother.

They’ve been doing this for a few weeks now, but it still kind of blows her mind to look around and see where they are, to look at her tiny son, the baby she still remembers cradling in his arms, and realises that he’s practically school-age now. The last time she stopped for breath he couldn’t have been more than a year old; now, all of a sudden, he’s closing in on six. He’s learning to read and write, making real conversation, and well on his way to becoming a fully-fledged little human. Every day, more and more, the sight of him steals her breath away.

The place is typically mid-afternoon busy, bustling but not overcrowded, and though it’s noisy enough that she has to strain to hear William’s chatter, somehow she catches the news bulletin up on the big-screen television without the least effort.

 _“Back from the dead,”_ the reporter is saying, and Samantha’s heart leaps into her mouth. _“Five years after the loss of the_ Queen’s Gambit _and the seven souls on board, Robert Queen’s son Oliver has been found alive and well…”_

It’s just like five years ago, just like the moment she heard his name on the radio, the moment she learned that he was dead. It’s exactly the same feeling, shock and horror and breathless panic, like the air is being sucked out of the room, the ground lurching out from underneath her. It’s a good thing she’s already sitting down because if she wasn’t she probably would have collapsed.

If possible, it’s even worse this time around. That’s an awful thing to feel, given the supposedly joyful news of a miraculous return from the dead, but given her unique situation she hopes it’s understandable. At the very least it’s more visceral, because this time it’s not just some hissing static-muffled announcement on the radio; this time it’s a great big flat-screen TV radiating Oliver’s face for everyone to see, gaunt and worn down but utterly unmistakable. This time she’s not just hearing his name, _“Oliver Queen”_ echoing from some morbid-sounding newsreader’s throat, she’s actually seeing his face, the face she was so sure she would never, ever see again.

It’s been five years since she last let herself think of him, five years since they said he was dead. Five years, undone in less than a heartbeat. There he is, right there in front of her, and those five years and the freedom that went with them, disappear as she looks up and finds his eyes. He’s ragged, clearly deeply affected by whatever he’s been through, but those eyes haven’t changed at all. Big, blue, and boyish; she’d know them anywhere, even through all that stubble and sinew. She sees them every time she looks at her son.

 _Their_ son, she remembers, and that’s when she starts choking.

It’s not the elegant, dainty, hand-over-the-mouth splutter that happens on television, a delicately cleared throat and a sip of water and that’s the end of it. Oh, no; her life is never that neat or clean. This is loud and violent and extremely messy, and it turns just about every head in the place.

Her eyes are streaming with tears, vision blurring almost to blindness, but it’s not enough. She can hardly see anything, but still somehow she can make out Oliver’s face up there on that screen, can still make out the world around her and the people staring. William is crying, beyond terrified, his hot chocolate and her coffee spilling to soak the table between them; everything’s a mess, a hazy symphony of customers from nearby booths whispering and murmuring, wondering if they should step in and try to help or pretend they don’t notice. She can’t block it out, can’t stop it, and it’s almost more overwhelming in its own way than the endlessly repeating echo of _“Oliver Queen, Oliver Queen, Oliver Queen”_.

William grabs her hand, tiny trembling fist locked around her fingers like he can stop the spasm if he holds on tight enough; he’s inconsolable, desperate and panic-stricken, wailing her name, and she tries to comfort him but the words lodge in her throat and launch her into another bout of breathless choking. It’s torturous; more than Oliver’s face, more than the pain and the panic of choking, the mess and the helplessness and all the rest of it, it is beyond torturous that she can’t comfort her terrified son. Helpless, heaving, horror lodged in her throat, she can’t breathe. She can only hold on, squeeze his hand as tightly and as desperately as he squeezes hers.

Help finds her just as she’s starting to think she really is going to die. Someone grabs her by the arm, holds her fast with one hand and whacks her on the back with the other. Once, then again, over and over until her airways clear a little, until the spluttering tapers off and she can suck down some much-needed oxygen, until she can breathe and think, until she’s strong enough to squint through her tears and find the ones streaming down William’s face.

“I’m okay,” she gets out.

It’s a rattling, awful sound, and of course he doesn’t believe it for a second. She wouldn’t either, if their positions were reversed. “No, you’re not!” he bawls, beyond scared. “You’re not, you’re not, you’re _not_!”

She tries to insist, to promise, but she’s used up what little oxygen she managed to get down, and whatever hollow placations she might have forced out are strangled by another explosive coughing fit. It’s less urgent this time, but that’s not much comfort for poor William.

“Take it easy.” It’s a woman’s voice, probably the kind soul still thumping her on the back. She lets go of her arm now, reaches over to touch William’s shoulder. “Your mom’s okay. She just needs a minute, okay?”

William sniffles, whimpers, but seems to buy it this time; he always has an easier time believing strangers than his own mother. Under normal circumstances Samantha might have been annoyed, but now she’s too grateful to care. She closes her eyes, tries to catch some fragment of her dignity, relieved that at least for a moment or two William is almost calm.

She chokes out another few heaving gasps, then finds her breath again, stronger and steadier.

“I’m okay.”

Her voice is shaking, and so are the fingers William is still squeezing; she’s guided her back into her seat, no doubt by the same guardian angel who’s been pounding her airways clear. She rubs her back a couple of times and then steps back. It’s only then that Samantha realises the rest of her is shaking too.

“You sure about that?”

“Mm.” It’s still not easy, getting the words out, but she does it for William’s sake as much as her own. “It… it’s really… no big deal.”

“Uh huh.” Apparently, grown-ups aren’t fooled quite as easily as kids. Go figure. “You know there’s a reason we mark those cups ‘hot’, right?”

Samantha clears her throat a couple of times, then turns to get a look at her impromptu saviour. It’s one of the waitresses, a young woman around her age with dark skin, bright eyes, and the kind of smile that would stop a speeding train. She recognises her from previous visits, always busy and always cheerful, but can’t quite place the name.

The look on her face makes it painfully obvious that she deals with this kind of stupidity on a daily basis, though, and Samantha flushes, humiliated beyond words that this time she’s the one causing a scene.

“I’m not…” Her voice is hoarse from all the choking, and her stomach feels very tight; she swallows hard, then tries again. “I’m not usually this clumsy, I swear. It’s just…” She glances at William, wonders if he’s old enough to recognise a white lie, or savvy enough to call her on it. “It’s been a long day.”

“Mommy?” Apparently, he still has more important things on his mind; he’s tugging on her sleeve, eyes wide and lips trembling. “Mommy, are you _really_ okay? Like, _really_?”

She forces a smile, shaky and very unsteady, and pulls him into a hug. Her sleeves drag across the coffee-soaked table, but she doesn’t care. Getting him into her arms is more important than anything in the world right now.

“Yes,” she promises him. “I’m really, _really_ okay.” 

He must be really scared because he doesn’t struggle like he usually does when she holds him so close in a public space, doesn’t try to wriggle out of her grip or complain that he’s too old for that now.

“Promise?”

“I promise. But this…” She coughs wetly, one final time, and the waitress gives her back another helpful thump. “This is why you’re not allowed to taste Mommy’s coffee until you’re at least thirty. Okay?”

“Good plan,” the waitress says, and the smile in her voice helps more than all the back-thwacking in the world. “You should listen to your mother.”

“Let’s not ask for miracles,” Samantha murmurs, and kisses William on the forehead. He fusses a little bit — _“I’m not a baby!”_ — but still doesn’t struggle, and right now that means the world to her.

The waitress smiles, clearly enamoured with him. That’s not a surprise; from Samantha’s experience, most people are. She tries not to think too hard about where he gets that from; it’s certainly not her, and that only leaves one alternative.

Without thinking, she looks back up at the television screen, and the sight of Oliver’s face is almost enough to start her choking all over again. She swallows again, harder, and she must look a little bit sick because the waitress takes a hasty step back and shoots her a worried look.

“Can I get you some water? Or maybe a few hundred Kleenex?”

“That would be great,” Samantha says, and it takes an embarrassingly long moment for her to realise that she needs to clarify that. “Both, I mean. Both would be…” She sighs, gives up the feint at coherence. “Both would be great. Thank you.”

The waitress chuckles and squeezes her shoulder. William scowls at her, forehead creasing adorably; he doesn’t flat-out say _‘don’t touch my mommy’_ , but it’s written all over his face. He does this a lot, always so protective of the people he cares about, and all the more so after a scare like this. He probably won’t leave her side for the rest of the day now.

Thankfully, the waitress is more amused than affronted; she ruffles his hair, and gives Samantha a smile. “Coming right up,” she says to Samantha. “Iris, by the way. Iris West.”

“Thank you.” She doesn’t offer her own name in return; it’s more than a little rude, given the circumstances, but she can’t bring herself to say it. With Oliver’s face still flickering on the TV, with the memories resurfacing in her head of all the things she thought she’d escaped, even just the thought of exposing herself like that is a nightmare. “If I can get into my wallet without setting myself on fire, you’ll get a huge tip.”

Iris laughs, nods, then scurries off. Samantha leans back in the chair, eyes closed, and tries to match her breathing to William’s. His is rhythmic and mostly even now that the panic has passed, and it’s easy to keep time with his sighs and murmurs. It helps to keep her calm as well, a strange kind of symbiosis where their moods feed from each other.

For the time being, at least, he’s content to let her hold him. He’s still holding her hand, squeezing her fingers every time his breath hitches, like he’s reminding himself that she’s still there, that she really is all right. He’ll probably never know how grateful she is for that, or that she needs him just as desperately as he needs her right now. She can’t block out that stupid news report, can’t scrub Oliver’s face from her mind, but she can keep William’s hand in hers, his head against her shoulder, keep the sound of his breathing close to her own heart. The familiarity, the warmth and love reminds her that he’s hers, that no-one will ever take him away. She needs to remember that, needs to keep it in mind or she’ll do something far worse than choke.

 _Oliver’s alive_ , she thinks, and tries so hard to believe that it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t change anything. It _can’t_ change anything. Oliver’s life was a three-ring circus long before he went down with the _Queen’s Gambit_ , and now that he’s back from the dead it’s only going to get worse. He’ll be on the front page of every newspaper, every magazine, every piece of paper from here to Coast City, and every television screen within a thousand miles or more. The whole world, or at least this little corner of it, will have its eyes on him, more so than it ever did before. And she will not allow her son to be a part of that.

William is older now, five years on from that unpleasant meeting with Moira Queen; he doesn’t remember that, of course, but Samantha does. She remembers letting herself believe that it was finally over, that she could finally draw a line under the entire fiasco, could finally forget any connection she might once have had with the Queen Family. He was too young back then to have the least idea what it meant, why his mother was shaking and holding him and whispering words he didn’t understand. A tall pretty stranger in a funny-smelling house, but by the time he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep he’d all but forgotten it ever happened.

Now, though, it’s different. Now, he’s old enough to understand, to see and remember everything. At the very least, he already knows that something’s wrong, that his mommy just almost choked to death, that she’s still shaking now even as she insists that she’s fine. He’s a clever, perceptive boy, and he knows that she’s not herself. He’s old enough, without a doubt, that his whole world would turn upside-down if he found out something like this.

It’s a long moment before she trusts herself to look up at the television screen again. It’s still going on; disjointed interviews with the fishermen who found him, nonsense trivia about the island he was stranded on, endless discussion of the thousand possible circumstances that might have led to his surviving for so long in a place like that. The words bleed and blur into each other, ceaseless and senseless; she barely hears them at all, but they keep playing that same shot over and over again, the moment he turned to look into the camera, and all she can see are William’s eyes.

As though sensing her feelings, William pulls back to look at her. He stares for a long moment, like he’s studying her, and though she doesn’t have the strength to meet his eyes when she’s staring up at his father’s, she can feel the intensity in him, like he’s trying to figure out what’s wrong, if there’s anything he can do to help, if he should be frightened again. So many questions, and she wants to answer them all, but the words dry up before she even starts. How to begin telling her baby boy that that’s his father up there, that she thought he was dead but he’s not? How, worse, to explain that a part of her wishes he still was?

After another minute or two, he gets restless, struggling out of her arms and hopping down to the floor. He’s still looking at her, though, face bright with that intensity he gets when he’s frightened or upset, and she can hardly stand the sight of him like that. His eyes always get so bright when he’s been crying, and it terrifies her how alike they look, how much the man up there on that screen, that wretched ghost back from the dead, looks like his son. It makes her want to scream, and it makes her want to cry.

“Mommy,” William says, and his lips are trembling, like he wants to start crying again too. “Mommy, are you sick?”

“I think I’m going to be,” she mutters, mostly for her own sake; he won’t grasp the sarcasm, though, and she doesn’t want to frighten him, so she shakes her head and leans in to give him a quick kiss. “No, sweetheart. I told you, Mommy’s just fine now. I just swallowed wrong, that’s all.”

“Really?” She can’t stand how bright his eyes are. Hating herself for it, she looks away. “Like, _really_ really?”

She tries to laugh it off, but apparently she’s closer to tears than she thinks she is, maybe even closer than he is, because it comes out more like a whimper. That’s bad, she knows; she tries to never lets him see her like this, never lets him catch the moments when she’s weak or vulnerable or just plain imperfect. He has to believe in her, has to see her as formidable and indestructible; he has to believe that she can protect him from whatever the world tries to toss at him. It’s bad, being so thrown, so completely out of it that she can’t even hold herself in check for his sake.

“Really,” she manages; her voice, at least, stays steady. “I promise, baby. Everything’s fine now.”

“Good to know,” Iris says, and hands her a glass of water. “I’d hate to have to charge you extra.”

She’s got a box Kleenex too, but rather than waiting for Samantha to pull herself together and wipe down the table she sets to work doing it herself. Samantha watches her, sipping her water and feeling thoroughly ashamed of herself. What a wonderful example she’s setting for her son, she thinks bitterly, sitting idly by while some poor waitress runs herself ragged trying to clean up after her.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should really…”

“Don’t worry about it. You’d be surprised how often this sort of thing happens.”

It’s meant as a joke, probably, but Samantha appreciates it just the same; it’s still not a good example for William, but at least the poor woman is trying not to make her feel any worse than she already does.

“I’m still sorry,” she says. “I’m sure this isn’t part of the job description.”

“It’s the management’s fault, really.” Iris shrugs, cocks her head at the television screen as though she somehow understands that that’s where this all started. “I must have told them a thousand times to take those things down. Great for business but… well…”

Samantha tries to chuckle, but her throat is too dry and she’s too close to tears. For a brief, crazy second, she thinks about unburdening, just opening her mouth and pouring out the whole sordid story right then and then. The whole truth, no details left out. What would be the harm, here and now in a place so neutral and noisy? Iris West, for all her unexpected helpfulness, is a near-perfect stranger, a random coffee-shop waitress in a city Oliver Queen has never visited and probably never will; she has good instincts, a devastating amount of insight, and more compassion than Samantha knows what to do with. There’s a strange kind of appeal in confiding to someone so impersonal, and all the more so when she has already been so kind.

She doesn’t know what stops her in the end. Paranoia, probably, though she knows that it’s misplaced. There’s no way Iris West could possibly know Oliver Queen; she wouldn’t be so calm if she did, wouldn’t be shrugging and smiling and fetching glasses of water for single mothers who can’t seem to hold their coffee. If she knew him, even just in passing, she’d be choking too; she’d be staring up at that screen with her heart on her sleeve, maybe even crying. 

She’s not, though. Instead, she’s coasting through her day with a smile on her face and a spring in her step, ignoring the news-report blather as though it doesn’t mean anything at all, as though everything is perfectly normal. She’s fine, and that means she’s safe; more importantly, it means that William would be safe. A moment of weakness from his mother wouldn’t hurt him here. She could take Iris aside, whisper her mistakes in a friendly ear, allow herself the luxury of a moment that would never leave this building. It might not mean much in practice, might not help anyone, but she can scarcely imagine how good it would feel to finally lift even just a a fraction of that weight from her shoulders.

As desperately as she wants to, though, she doesn’t. Because there it is, the paranoia. She can’t even open her mouth without feeling it surge up inside of her, an acid taste that drowns the words before they even manifest, replacing every thought with that terrified, panic-stricken voice. _What if, what if, what if?_

Fact is, she can’t know for sure. There’s not a stranger left in the world she can look at and know beyond all doubt that they’re safe. For the rest of her life, at least for as long as Oliver isn’t really dead, she’ll be wondering, questioning, doubting. The Queen family has an impossibly long reach, and its influence is powerful; their voices might not carry too far beyond their precious Starling, but apparently it echoes loudly enough that even a random Central City coffee house would broadcast the prodigal son’s miraculous return. Small though it is, there’s always a chance. Even here, where it should be safe, where she and William should be safe, she still can’t be sure.

This is it, she supposes; once again, this is her life. She’ll probably never stop wondering, never stop doubting just how perfect a stranger really is. She doesn’t know Iris West’s history — or, hell, her future — any more than Iris knows hers; who’s to say she doesn’t know him, or Moira, or young Thea, or some other dusty corner of the Queen’s mansion?

Yesterday, it wouldn’t have mattered. Yesterday, Oliver Queen was dead and Samantha Clayton was free. It’s still not the sort of thing she’d blab without thinking, but if she found herself in a moment like this one, a borderline breakdown in a public space, it wouldn’t be so far beyond the realm of possibility to think about opening up. Find a quiet corner somewhere, make sure that William was out of earshot, and confess it all. Yesterday, it would have been harmless; today, it’s lethal.

It terrifies her, frankly. Yesterday, she would have seized this moment without a second thought, and where would that have left her today? What might a moment’s weakness a week ago have cost her now, with Oliver’s face back in the news? She couldn’t have known, of course — no-one could have — but that doesn’t make the thought of it any less horrifying, doesn’t make her feel any less awful. Just a moment’s thoughtlessness, and she would have destroyed her son’s life without even realising it.

She feels helpless, and beyond awful. Everything she thought was behind her, every second of heart-stopping panic when she saw someone who looked like him, everything she’d told herself didn’t matter because he was dead… it’s all gone up in smoke. One stupid news bulletin, a one-in-a-million rescue of a young man presumed dead five years earlier, and she’s right back where she started.

Just like that, she’s back there in the Queen’s mansion, staring into Moira’s cold eyes, that awful blood-money cheque shaking in her hands. She can hear it all over again, the ice in Moira’s voice, the sinister smile on her face as she says, _“I want to make certain that my son has a bright future.”_ Nine months of hiding, panicking at the thought of what might happen if someone saw, if something slipped out. Nine months, and almost a whole year of her son’s life, lost and wasted to wondering and worrying.

Then, in a flash of tragedy-touched fortune, it was all over. Oliver was dead, and for the first time in far too long she remembered how to breathe. It took some time, but she stopped panicking, stopped looking over her shoulder, stopped breaking out in a cold sweat every time she saw a pair of broad shoulders or a mop of sandy-blond hair, stopped listening to the voices in the back of her head wondering if she was really safe out here. Oliver was gone, and even if there was some slim chance that he might have found out, it didn’t matter any more. She was safe, _free_ , and for the first time she let herself imagine that maybe William could grow up that way too.

It was wonderful while it lasted, she thinks, and tries not to cry.

“Hey.” There’s a different kind of softness in Iris’s voice now, like she can hear all of that, the feeling if not the story behind it, despite Samantha’s best efforts. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, I…” She swallows, closes her eyes for maybe a beat or two too long, then sighs. “I think I’m good.”

“You sure? I could probably wrangle you a free biscotti or something.”

Samantha shakes her head, automatic. A revenant from her memories of Moira, probably; by now it’s all but drilled into her brain to never take hand-outs, not from anyone.

“I’ll pass,” she says. “But thank you.”

Iris shrugs, like it’s all just part of the service, though they both know it’s much, much more than that. This is above and beyond the call of duty for someone on her pay grade, and there’s not a boss in the world that would have judged her for ignoring the scene completely, just disappearing into the back room and never looking back. Samantha certainly wouldn’t have thought anything of it, no more than she thinks anything of the dozen other patrons who stood by and stared in silence; if it had been anyone else, she probably would have done exactly the same thing. That Iris didn’t, that she’s still standing here, still trying to help even with the immediate crisis averted, says a great deal about her.

“Look,” she murmurs, lowering her voice for Samantha’s ears only. “If you need…”

She trails off before she can say _‘anything’_ again and give it a different meaning, before she can step all the way over that line, before an innocuous offer of a biscotti becomes an offer of a shoulder or a friend or whatever else people are supposed to offer in moments like this.

Samantha is grateful, for the silence as much as the aborted gesture, and she doesn’t know what to say. It’s difficult not to feel an ache of longing, hard not to wish that she had the courage or the strength to take her up on it, to push aside the paranoia and the panic and all those other things, to just lean in for once in her life and let someone else see the burden she’s carrying.

It’s funny, feeling this way. Samantha has never been one to air her dirty laundry in public, but it’s not fair on anyone, herself or Iris, to let them think that she’s just clumsy or melodramatic or incapable of drinking coffee without making a scene. She’s none of those things. She is shaken right down to her soul, and it tears her apart that no-one, in here or anywhere else, will ever understand why.

It doesn’t matter that this doesn’t change anything. Oliver being alive again doesn’t give him any more access to William’s life than he had before he was dead; she knows that, of course, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t mean that she’s not thrown, that she’s not shocked and sickened and completely and utterly destroyed by this resurrection of a man she spent five years trying to forget. Five years since he died and she laid his memory to rest; it’s a long, long time to start rebuilding all over again, a long time to relearn the old habits of flinching at every shadow, of hiding from every stranger, of wondering and worrying and doubting.

She glances up at the television, relieved beyond measure to see that someone has changed the channel. Oliver’s face is gone, replaced by an idyllic forest and a smooth voice-over commentary. The change of scenery gives her a little courage, the strength she needs to straighten her shoulders and smile back at Iris.

“Thank you,” she says again. “Like I said, it’s been a long day. I… uh…” She closes her eyes against the ache, the need to unburden, and reaches instead for a harmless cliche. “Well. Let’s just say I got some bad news.”

Iris touches her shoulder again, tender. “I figured it was something like that. You have that look about you.” Samantha quirks a brow, as curious as she is uncomfortable, and Iris grins. “And, well, I guess I just enjoy reading people. You can learn a lot from the things they don’t say.”

Samantha desperately hopes that’s not true.

Still, she has to fight to keep from looking around, from trying to read the others in this room too. She wants to find something familiar, someone among all of these strangers, customers or baristas or whatever else, who might have known Oliver Queen, who might have danced for joy at the news that he’s not dead, who might be already booking their train tickets to Starling to see him. It’s hard not to look around at this sea of people and wonder what kinds of stories Iris might have read in any one of them, whether those stories would dovetail with her own or slam through her like a speeding truck.

It makes her panic a little to think about it, and she grounds herself by squeezing William’s hand, reminding herself that he’s still there, that they’re still a family and no amount of news — good or bad — will ever take that away.

“Mommy,” he whines, as if on cue. He’s just reacting to the contact, she knows, but his voice tears through to her guts, and the way his voice rises on the second syllable makes her heart tighten. “Mommy, can we _go_ now?”

She laughs; it’s tearful and sniffly-sounding, but it’s more than she would have expected at the moment. Iris chuckles too, no doubt relieved that there’s some shred of sanity left in her problem customer after all. She smiles at William, and there’s genuine affection in the way she tosses the coffee-drenched napkin onto the table to ruffle his hair again.

“You take care of your mama, okay?” she says, like she really does deal with this sort of thing every day.

William, of course, eats up the attention, and the note of responsibility. “Yep, yep, yep,” he squeaks, bouncing up onto his toes; he’s excited, like he always is when someone shows a little interest in him, and itching to prove that he’s a good boy. “I always take care of her. That’s what I do, it’s like my job. Isn’t it, Mommy?”

He puffs his chest out, so proud of himself, and that makes Samantha proud too; she loves him so much in moments like this that she can hardly breathe. “Yes,” she says. “You’re very good at it.”

“Atta boy,” Iris says. “You’re a regular little hero.”

That’s about the best thing William has ever heard in his life. He wraps his arms around Samantha’s legs, hugging her hard. “You hear that?” he asks, practically vibrating with excitement. “I’m a _hero_.”

There’s no accounting for the way that stings; Samantha swallows over a lump in her throat, blinking back fresh new tears. “Yes,” she manages. “Yes, you are.”

She takes a deep, steadying breath, but this time it doesn’t make her choke. Her airways feel clearer than they have since this whole mess began, and for just a moment or two she can breathe without panicking. It’s hard to hold on to the bad stuff when the good stuff is right there in front of her, when it’s squeezing her legs so tightly she worries that it’ll cut off her circulation; it’s hard to keep her thoughts on a man she’d thought was dead for five years when the only good thing he ever did is right here with her, a hero in her eyes.

Iris senses that too, just like she senses everything else. Her smile is wide and bright and so sincere that Samantha finds herself wanting to hug her almost as much as her son.

“The Kleenex are on the house,” she says, and winks.

“Thank you.” Given everything that’s happened, not least of all the mess she’s made, it feels tragically inadequate. “I mean it. You have no idea…”

She fumbles with her wallet, scrounging for a tip or some other way to show how much this means to her. Graceful to the end, Iris shrugs it off with a wave and another dazzling smile.

“Like I said, it’s all part of the service.” They both know that’s nonsense, but she sells it like a pro. “Maybe buy your little hero an ice-cream or something.”

Samantha shoots one last lingering look at the television screen. They’re still showing the forest, rambling on and on about ecosystems and natural predators. Honestly, they could be showing the surface of the moon for all she cares, as long as they’re not showing Oliver’s face.

She breathes slowly, in and out through her nose, feels the lingering tickle in her throat where she choked. She tries not to think about what this means, about all the ways she’ll be waiting for the other shoe to drop, all the ways she’ll be counting down to the inevitable moment when Oliver shows up on her doorstep and says _‘I know everything’_.

It’ll come, that moment, or maybe it won’t; either way she knows that she’ll be waiting for it. She’ll be ticking off the moments and the minutes and the years, thanking the heavens for however many quiet moments she and William get to themselves. She can’t do anything about it, can’t stop it from happening if it will, but while she has her son at her side she can try not to think about it.

Tonight, she will. When William is safe and sound and sleeping in his bed, dreaming of a hero’s life, when she’s all alone in the darkness with her thoughts and the silence and the shadows, then she’ll let it hit. She’ll panic and probably cry. She’ll worry and she’ll wonder, she’ll stop fighting all those things that have been clawing at her back, all those feelings that made her choke. She’ll let it all in, work through it and deal with it all by herself, like she always deals with everything, like she’s always had to.

That’s then, though. For now, for William’s sake, she’ll carry on like nothing’s happened, like everything is exactly the same as it’s always been, like it’s just another day, as normal and unimportant as any other. She’ll distract herself with small blessings, with William’s smile and the kindness of a waitress who reads people a little too well, with free Kleenex tissues and an overpriced coffee that she never even got to drink. She’ll take what strength she can from what she has right now, and make sure that it’s enough.

Whatever comes, or doesn’t, she won’t ever let William see her lose control of herself. Not like that. Never again.

She steadies herself, turns away from the television and back to the real world, the only one that matters.

“Yeah,” she says, and takes her little hero by the hand. “I think I’ll do that.”

*


	5. Chapter 5

*

**2014**

*

In a twisted sort of way, it feels like facing her fears.

Moira Queen is dead. Died protecting her children, no less, and the irony there is as painful as it is fitting. Assuming, of course, that it’s true.

It’s a hell of a proviso. Despite the evidence, Samantha still can’t bring herself to believe it, to take the words at face value when they’ve been wrong before. She’s been burned by the woman too many times, burned by their whole family, and she can’t forget the fact that Oliver was ‘dead’ too until he suddenly wasn’t.

Moira is more ruthless than Oliver will ever be; if he can come back from the dead unscathed, then so can she. And probably in her best heels, too.

It’s a strange feeling, not being sure whether she wants to believe it, not being sure if it makes her a horrible person to pray that the news is true this time. Assuming it is, it feels almost like freedom, like turning around after a years-long chase only to discover that the thing she’s been running from is finally gone, that she is finally free. Only, of course, she’s been running for so long she can’t remember how to walk; she’s been looking over her shoulder for her son’s whole life, and she has no idea how to stop now.

She feels like a horrible person. She should have left these people behind years ago, should have no reason to even think of their names any more, and yet here she is again, staring at the obituary of a woman she can’t seem to let go.

They keep creeping back into her world, the Queens and their influence, murmurings in the media about how one or another of them is dead or alive or dead-and-then-alive. It’s the sort of thing she wishes the distance could cure; Central City is miles away from Starling but apparently the Queens are a famous enough family that their exploits carry even out here, again and again and again.

It’s like looking in through someone else’s window, catching snippets of their lives and feeling connected in a way she knows she isn’t, driven slowly mad by the fragments of half-information and all the gaps she can’t fill in. It’s like hearing the name of someone who once meant something important, or someone who once did something terrible to her, like a bolt of lighting straight through her chest every time something happens to one of them. She wants to ignore it, wants to close her mind against the words and the names, but it’s always life and death, always something huge, something world-shattering. Just like the Queens themselves, their stories are larger than life; they dig in deep, and she can’t fight them off. 

She’s moved on, or she thought she had. William is growing up fast, bigger and stronger with every passing day; he’s never asked, never shown any interest in where he came from, why his friends have fathers and he doesn’t. He’s happy as he is, quick to smile and quicker with his imagination, and she hates that she can’t be as complacent as he is, that she can’t care as little.

Maybe that’s her weakness. Maybe it’s just inevitable. Oliver is with her every day, whether she wants him there or not; he’s right there in William’s bright clear eyes, in his dazzling boyish smile, in the way he carries himself. He’s right there, so much a part of the son she hid from him, and she can’t ignore it when he is her son too. It lands like a blow every time she hears or sees or reads their names; it leaves her breathless and broken and wishing she was better.

A stronger person would walk away. A bigger, better, braver person would have put up walls, would have protected herself against moments like this. A tougher person would know how to handle these constant memories, this death by a thousand cuts. But she is not that person; she never was, and in any case she’s too busy trying to raise her child to worry about her own weaknesses; the best she can do is praise heaven that this time William isn’t there when she gets the news about Moira.

Her first thought, naturally, is of Oliver. Is he coping? Is he all right? His life has always been a circus, but there’s no coming back from the loss of a parent; it’s as permanent and brutal as the loss of a child, even if it is ultimately undone, and a part of him wants to reach out, to knock on that door just like she did when it was Moira in mourning garb, when Oliver was the one who was ‘dead’.

But then, what the hell would she say to him? What’s the right thing to say to an ex-lover who died, came back from the dead, and then promptly lost his mother? Somehow, she doesn’t think _‘Moira Queen was a horrible person, but grief is hard so have some flowers’_ would strike the right note. No more so than _‘…and, by the way, meet your son.’_

No, she tells herself. That’s not going to happen, and Moira’s death doesn’t change anything. It only makes her more resolved to keep things exactly the way they are, more determined to protect her son from moments like this. Another episode of Queen Family Drama, and here they are again, just like always, catapulted into the public eye whether they want it or not. Again, they’ve lost one of their own. Again, they’re mourning. And again, it’s right there for all the whole world to see. If it’s not one thing it’s another — a family tragedy or a family miracle, it’s all the same — and no amount of regret or sympathy changes the fact that, for what seems like the millionth time in William’s short life, his father’s face is splashed all over the news.

She will not have him exposed to that. She _won’t_.

Still, for all that she can’t bring herself to call, to send a card or stop by to extend her sympathies, still she can’t stay away.

She can’t. She wants to, just like she wanted to let Oliver himself stay dead and buried when she heard about the _Queen’s Gambit_. She wants to close her eyes and her mind, pretend she never heard the news and get on with her life like she should have done all those years ago; she wants to leave that whole family rotting at the bottom of the ocean or perfectly made up in some decadent, over-priced coffin, but she can’t. There’s still that voice in the back of her head, whispering and mocking and telling her not to believe it until she sees it with her own eyes.

She knows that it’s stupid, but this time she has to be sure. Moira has always been the one right there, the one that scares her, the one she’s been running from; so much more than Oliver, it’s always been Moira. Moira haunting her at night and in her paranoid moments, Moira hanging over her shoulder, mocking her and reminding her of all the ways she could ruin her life with a word or a smile. The Queen family, with their high-profile news stories, their deaths and not-deaths and all those things she shouldn’t have any reason to care about; it was all of them, yes, but Moira was always at the front.

She can’t let it go. She can’t turn it off, not until she knows for sure that this is one ghost that won’t come back.

She waits. If nothing else, she has that going for her. She gives it as much time as she can, waits until she’s absolutely certain that the dust has settled, that she won’t be intruding on someone else’s grief, that when she finds the spot it’ll be empty and she will be alone. The Queens’ grief isn’t hers now, any more than it was when it was Oliver, and she will not intrude on them again. This is between her and Moira, or whatever’s left of her, and she’ll put herself in the ground too before she drags anyone else into it.

She goes alone, leaving William with a friend; she takes the train, and spends the whole journey reading through Moira’s obituary in the newspaper. She reads it maybe a dozen times, again and again until the words are all but burned onto her brain. Still, she won’t let herself believe them.

She has spent so long with Moira at her back. So long with her cheque sitting in her drawer, so long haunted by her cold stare, her thin smile, her acid voice; so much of her life, her identity, so much of who she is was shaped by this woman, and it doesn’t matter that it’s stupid, doesn’t matter that it’s selfish or paranoid or cruel. She has to know. She has to be sure.

Heaven help her, she has to see it for herself.

—

The cemetery is quiet, and almost entirely empty.

It’s a good hour, she supposes, the sun sinking low but not completely gone; it’s too late in the day for most people to pay their respects, but early enough that there’s nothing strange in someone being there. It doesn’t keep her from feeling exposed, though, doesn’t stifle the sense of otherness, of not belonging here, and in all honesty she supposes that it shouldn’t, that if it did there would be something wrong with her. The truth is, she _doesn’t_ belong here; she never will, and it is so, so important that she doesn’t forget that.

She takes her time, as much out of nervousness as not knowing where she’s going; there’s no shortage of death in this place, marked and unmarked graves as far as the eye can see, and it makes her skin feel too tight, makes her breath come in harsh, rapid gasps. She meanders between them, tries not to let her eyes or her thoughts linger for too long on the endless strings of dates and names and faceless dead strangers. The gravestones are gorgeous, obviously very expensive, and she tries to keep a safe distance from them.

It’s more by luck than judgement that she finds Moira’s, the grave semi-fresh and flower-strewn, and it’s about a second too late that she realises she’s not alone.

Her heart launches itself into her throat, and she has to bite down on her tongue to keep from crying out. It has to be one of the family — no-one else would have any reason to be here at this time of day — and for a frozen half-second she’s thoroughly convinced that it’s Oliver, that he will see her and recognise her, that it will all be over in one ill-judged moment of stupidity.

He’ll know everything, she’s convinced, and it doesn’t matter that that’s not possible, that William is safe and sound back in Central City and Oliver couldn’t possibly know he even exists; it doesn’t matter that there’s no way he or anyone else could know about the things she’s been hiding, no way he could see them in her. Her secrets are buried with Moira; for all anyone knows, she’s just here to pay her respects, but of course that doesn’t matter either. None of it matters because, like always, her panic button fires so much more quickly than her common sense.

She spins on her heels, tries to run away, but her body betrays her. She’s off-balance, still numb with panic, and so she stumbles. The world tilts on its axis as she trips and falls, crashing to the ground and introducing herself far more effectively than she ever would have done if she’d just walked on by.

The figure at the grave straightens. It’s not Oliver, thank god, but a young woman; she’s maybe eighteen or nineteen, certainly no older, and she looks utterly terrified.

“Who’s there?” she cries; the fear in her voice almost hurts worse than the gravel on Samantha’s hands and knees.

She thinks about pretending she didn’t hear, just scrambling back to her feet, gathering up what’s left of her dignity, and leaving the startled young thing to her own devices. Her every instinct is screaming at her to get out before she’s seen, before the girl catches her face and asks what the hell she’s doing at the grave of a woman she’s not even supposed to know. It scares the life out of her, squeezes her ribs until she feels like her heart is about to burst, the horror and the weight of what might happen if Oliver is here too.

It’s irrational, she knows, and stupid, and it shames her more than she’ll ever admit that for about half a second she genuinely considers leaving that poor girl standing there in the half-dark, scared out of her mind.

She doesn’t in the end, but it’s a closer call than she’d care to think about. The girl sounds worse than terrified, far beyond what someone would expect from a moment like this, like she really believes someone is stalking her, skulking through the shadows and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. She sounds broken and lost, and for all her self-preservation and all her instincts, it’s more than Samantha can do to turn around and leave her fearing the worst. She knows that feeling all too well herself, after all, and she takes a long step forward before her own flight reflex can cut in and stop her.

“Nothing!” she blurts out. “Nobody. No-one. Nothing. Just…” She dusts off her knees, tries to keep her face in shadow. “I was just passing through. On the path. I wasn’t… I didn’t…” She forces herself to catch a breath for both their sakes, sucks down some air and tries again. “Hi.”

It’s worse than weak, but apparently it’s enough. The young woman’s shoulders slump like all the strength has gone out of her now that the imaginary threat has passed; her face contorts into an odd expression, like she can’t quite decide whether to be relieved or grief-stricken, and she sighs like the whole world is crashing down all around her. She looks wretched, struck by something so much deeper than the loss of someone who clearly meant a lot to her, and Samantha finds herself aching for her, wishing that she could help.

“You scared me,” the poor thing says; she sounds petulant, in a way that smacks more of bravado than genuine anger. “What kind of person sneaks around a graveyard at this time of…” She looks up at the sky, as though realising for the first time that there’s still a few hours left before nightfall. “…evening?”

“I’m sorry.” It’s true; she is. She didn’t mean to be discovered, and she definitely didn’t mean to hurt or frighten anyone. “I was just passing. I didn’t think anyone was out here.”

“Well, they are.” Her voice is sharp but fragile, just waiting for the wrong kind of pressure at the wrong moment to shatter it into a million pieces. She turns back to the grave, shadows stretching across her face. “Not for much longer, but whatever. You should be more considerate. People are grieving out here.”

“I know.” She wrings her hands, flounders for a quick and easy way out of this. “Like I said, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare you or invade your privacy, or anything like that. It really was just an accident.” She studies the grave, feels her stomach churn. “For what it’s worth, I’m…” Her voice cracks, like she’s as close to shattering as her companion; honestly, she might be. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

The girl laughs, bitter and brittle, pain touched with bravado. “Right. _Loss_.” She rolls her eyes. “You have no idea.”

“I…” She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, blurts out the question before she can think to stop herself. “Did you know her very well?”

Blessedly, the girl is so locked up in her own head, she doesn’t notice the obvious familiarity in the question. “Thought I did,” she mutters. “Turns out, not so much.”

There’s so much pain in her voice, the kind of brokenness that comes with too many feelings and no idea how to sort them all out. Samantha’s heart goes out to her, it really does. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she says, and wishes that she could offer something more.

“Sure.” She sighs, looks back to the grave, eyes darkening in the dimming sun, like she can’t decide whether she wants to spit on it or cry over it. “She was my mother. You know, unless she lied about that too.”

Samantha swallows, tries not to think of Oliver. “Oh,” she says, about as subtle as a sledgehammer. “I suppose that makes you Thea Queen?”

“The one and only.” She rolls her eyes, turns away from her mother and gives the gravel path a vicious kick. “So they say, anyway. Who knows if it’s really true? But then, who cares, right?”

“Uh…”

In any case, true or not, she doesn’t sound particularly proud of the title; that puts her a step or two up from her brother. Samantha remembers all too well the way Oliver used to react when his name went up in lights, the way his grin widened like he was latching on to a dozen fresh new seduction techniques with every misdemeanour the press published.

Honestly, he’s not alone in that. There’s not a single member of that family who hasn’t enjoyed a moment or two of notoriety, a headline in the papers or a flicker on the television screen; she wonders briefly how much damage that sort of exposure might do to an angry young woman, to back-from-the-dead Oliver’s little sister, how a life in the limelight might have forced her to grow up. Money doesn’t prepare you for a lifetime of constant scrutiny, and it definitely doesn’t prepare you for watching your most personal tragedies play out all over the news.

For maybe the first time, Samantha realises just how easy she’s had it, how safe and comfortable her world has been. She’s only ever seen the Queens from the outside, looking in on the Family Drama from a safe distance, remembering the impact their lives had on hers and knowing that she and William were far away from it all. She remembers the look on Moira’s face the last time they spoke; _“my daughter has just lost her father and her brother,”_ she said, and Samantha wonders how someone so young must have struggled with that.

She wonders again now. Five years of laying to rest the memory of her brother, only to find him washed up on her doorstep just as the pain is finally starting to ease. That would be enough of a trauma for anyone, but now her mother seems to be following suit. Samantha’s been watching the story through the lens of news articles, but she’s heard the reports that Thea was involved somehow, that Moira died protecting her children. Whatever she might have seen or read or heard about, this poor kid has been living through it all, as close and personal as Samantha lived through William’s first steps, his first words, his first everything. It must have taken such a terrible toll.

Back in her Starling City days, she and Thea Queen never met; they never had the opportunity. Oliver mentioned his baby sister maybe once or twice, and of course she heard about the girl’s exploits after her father and her brother were presumed dead; _‘off the rails’_ , they called her, and even then she thought it was needlessly cruel. Worse than cruel, if the look on her face right now is any measure to go by; this is clearly a young woman who has been to hell and back again.

In a twisted sort of way it makes her angry. This is the Queen legacy, a sister and a daughter left to grieve and grieve and grieve again. There but for the grace of God goes Oliver’s own child, _her_ child, and Samantha is glad in a way she’s never felt before that she has spared him all of this pain.

This is no place for grudges or blame, though, no place for wanting to lash out and kick the grave or curse their names — Oliver’s, Moira’s, all of them — for putting this poor young girl through this. She has no claim on Thea, no reason to want to protect her, but she was no older than this young girl when her world got turned upside-down too, and if there’s one thing she’s learned from being a parent these past eight years it’s how difficult it suddenly becomes to see someone young and in pain. All the more so here and now, knowing the source of Thea’s pain as intimately as she does. The Queen poison is as potent as ever, it seems, and time doesn’t heal everything.

She thinks about saying it. _I knew your brother. Like, in the biblical sense._ If nothing else, it would break the ice, cut through some of the tension here, Thea’s obvious emotions and Samantha’s own fear that Oliver is lurking around the corner, that he’s watching and waiting for a chance to leap out and interrogate her. As though she would ever be so high on his priority list, as though he would really care about some half-forgotten ex-lover when his mother’s grave is scarcely even cold. Selfish and stupid, even thinking such a thing, but still she finds herself looking around, bracing for a moment that she knows in her heart will never ever come.

Thea, apparently more observant than her brother, picks up on her restlessness in a heartbeat. “You waiting for someone?” she asks.

“Avoiding someone, actually.” She blurts it out without even thinking, but Thea’s eyes widen with something that looks oddly like empathy, like she maybe understands that feeling a little too well, and that makes it difficult to take back. “I mean… uh, I’m not really from around here, so…”

“Lucky you,” Thea mutters. The words are bitter, but her expression isn’t; it’s not quite soft, but as close to it as Samantha has ever seen on a Queen, like maybe she’s warming to this conversation, or else to her. Given her history with the poor girl’s brother, that’s probably not a good thing. “I’m getting out too. Tonight. Gonna leave this worthless craphole behind and never look back.”

Samantha supposes the right thing to do here would be to try and convince her otherwise. Thea is clearly skittish, clearly alone, and clearly in no condition to go running off to some undisclosed location presumably without even letting her brother know she’s leaving. Any responsible person, anyone with a shred of decency in them would try to talk her down, but maybe raising a child hasn’t made her as nurturing as she likes to pretend it has, because she doesn’t even entertain the thought.

She remembers all too vividly being in this same position herself. Running off into the night, getting herself and her unborn child as far away from Starling City and the Queen family as she could. It’s very, very hard to talk someone else out of doing the very same thing that she did herself, and all the more so knowing as she does now how much worse it would have been for everyone involved if she hadn’t.

“A fresh start,” she says aloud, and lets a hint of the sadness, the empathy, creep into her voice. “I understand that. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can do after a terrible loss.” She closes her eyes, tries not to see Oliver in his sister’s face. “Start over. Start picking up the pieces.”

 _I would know,_ she thinks, but bites down on her tongue before she can say it. A part of her wants to, wants to let Thea into her world for a moment. _When I was your age, I was carrying your nephew_. She thinks about giving up the rest of it too, or at least as much of it as Oliver knows, the part where the baby died before it ever lived. _I suffered a terrible loss too,_ she could say. _I left this town behind me too, and it worked out for the best._

It would help, she knows. At the very least, Thea would know that someone out there has felt like she does, that she’s not the only eighteen-or-nineteen-year-old who has been so afraid, so lost and broken by a place that she’d run away and start clean somewhere else. It would help to know she’s not alone. But the lie has always been so brutal, so terrible, and she can’t bear the thought of saying it again. She still feels it every day, right there in her stomach, a punch to the place where her son grew.

Even now, it makes her feel ill. More so, remembering the way Oliver reacted, the way his voice trembled; it was relief, she knew, though he tried to make it sound like sorrow. He felt blessed, lucky, and she wonders how that would have made her feel if the story had been true, the knife in the back it would have been to hear him struggle not to smile when her world was shattering. The lie hurt, yes, but not as much as knowing just how little he would have cared.

Thea is looking at her strangely now, like she’s trying to figure out whether this awkward stumbling intruder really does understand what she’s feeling or whether it’s all just lip-service. Samantha doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know how to phrase herself without twisting the truth into something horrible. She wants to share her experiences, but she can’t face airing the lie again and she can’t offer the truth to Oliver’s sister.

So, instead, she steps back and lets their surroundings speak for her. _We’re in a cemetery,_ she doesn’t say. _We’re all grieving here. We’ve all suffered loss, we’ve all been through strife. We are all in great pain._

It’s not really true, at least not for her, but she can’t very well say that she came here to make sure the poor girl’s mother really was dead, that Moira Queen has been the ghost at her heels for the last nine years, that everything she became is because of Moira’s scheming. This is no place for that, even though Thea has the look of someone who isn’t sure where she stands on the grief scale either.

Interesting, the way the grief twists with bitterness, the way her voice rises with resentment, like it’s not really so clear-cut for her either. Interesting, Samantha thinks with some malice, that even Moira’s own daughter doesn’t know how to feel now that she’s gone. It makes her wonder what else went on behind those closed mansion doors.

“You got a family?” Thea asks, seemingly out of the blue.

Samantha bites down on a painful, ironic laugh. “You could say that,” she says, and doesn’t point out that it’s Oliver’s — that it’s _Thea’s_ — family too.

Thea’s jaw is very pale; she’s clenching it so hard it has to hurt. Samantha wants to put a hand on her shoulder, wants to give her a hug or something, anything to make this a little easier for her. She looks very small, but incredibly strong, in that tragic way that people often are when they’ve been hurt. The paradox cuts right through her.

“Family sucks,” Thea mutters, mostly to herself. “I hope yours isn’t as crappy as mine.”

Samantha frowns. “What happened?”

It’s only once the words are out that she realises she doesn’t want to know.

Thea does laugh, just as painful and just as ironic as Samantha’s wanted to be, but braver than she is too.

“Oh, you know,” she says. “The usual crap. My dad wasn’t my real dad. My mother lied to me for my whole freaking life, and then died right in front of me before I could… before I got a chance to…”

She breaks off, choking on a sob, and Samantha can’t help herself; dangerous though it might be to get too close, it’s more than she can do to leave someone so helpless and so alone in so much pain. She closes the space between them, ignoring the familiar tug of panic, and touches her shoulder. 

“I’m sure she understood.” It comes out hollow and queasy, not unlike the way she’s feeling right now. “Parents… _mothers_ … have a way of…”

Thea turns away before she can finish, but she doesn’t pull free. She doesn’t even acknowledge the contact at all, just lets it sit there unresisted; _I’ll take the compassion,_ she seems to be saying, _but don’t defend my mother_.

“I doubt it,” she says aloud, and all but confirms it. “The great Moira Queen, right? Except no. She wasn’t. She screwed up all the time. She ruined people’s lives.”

Samantha knows that already, of course, but she can’t say so. It breaks her heart, almost more than the pain in Thea’s eyes; she wants to pull her into a hug, wants to reach out, to stop Moira’s poison spreading any further, but she knows that she can’t. She can’t say any of the things she knows, can’t give voice to any of her own pain, not without outing herself and her son, not without putting his life in danger and throwing hers back into the hell she spent so long trying to outrun.

It breaks her heart, all the things she wants to do, wants to offer, wants to _be_ for Thea’s sake. This is probably the closest moment she will ever share with a member of this awful family, and that includes the night of William’s conception. And that is so, so messed up.

Thea is still going, oblivious to her inner turmoil, to the way Samantha’s hand is starting to shake on her shoulder, the way she’s blinking very hard even though the sun is too low in the sky by now to be in anyone’s eyes. She’s so angry, so wounded and broken, she’s all but forgotten anyone is there at all.

“And my _brother_ …” It’s a blurted-out rant, apropos of nothing, but still Samantha feels her blood run cold. “He didn’t even bother showing up to the funeral. I mean, what kind of a person _does_ that? His own freaking mother, for crying out loud, and he didn’t even…”

Samantha pulls away. She has to, or risk collapsing right then and there. She’s wondered so many times whether Oliver has changed, whether his five years off the map turned him into something new, whether there’s even the tiniest chance that he’s become the sort of person she might one day think about introducing to his son. She’s thought about it so many times since he came back from the dead, wondered and worried and tortured herself over it; what if he’s better now? what if he deserves a chance to meet his son? what if? _what if?_

Apparently, she shouldn’t have worried. Still, to hear it confirmed like this, so undeniably and so brutally, and by his own sister, knocks her knees out from under her. It hurts too, far more than she ever expected it to.

“Your brother.” She can’t bring herself to say his name. “I’m sure he had his reasons.”

It’s embarrassing, how hopeful she sounds. Her voice is a tremor, shot through with her own kind of panic, the memory of Moira’s face when she said William had his father’s eyes. She knows she’s being too kind, that there’s no excuse for leaving his little sister alone at their mother’s funeral; she knows that, of course, but she wants so desperately to believe it. So much more than she wants to reach out to Thea, she wants to imagine that there is some small shred of redemption still alive in Oliver Queen, that he’s not the same selfish playboy she knew all those years ago, that maybe there is still some shred of hope for his son not to turn out the same way.

It’s a stupid thing to hope for, of course, and the tremor in her voice is for her own sake, not Thea’s.

“He always has his ‘reasons’,” Thea is muttering. “Everyone always has their reasons, don’t they? Always something more ‘important’.”

“Thea.” The name sounds strange, tastes strange, but she has to say something. This girl has to know that someone out there cares, even if it is just some stranger in a cemetery. “It sounds like… it sounds like your family is very complicated…”

That’s the understatement of the century, knows, so it’s not exactly a surprise when Thea stares at her like she’s lost her mind.

“You can say that again,” she snaps, without irony. “Why else do you think I’m getting out of here?”

“Fair enough.” Samantha tries to smile, but it turns sour. “Well, hey, if you ever find yourself in Central City…”

But she stops, cutting herself off before she can let the words escape. As much as she wants to extend a hand, offer an invitation of help to a young runaway in need, she knows that she can’t. She’d have to give her name, unveil her identity, and she can’t risk doing that. She can’t throw herself down, can’t throw _William_ down, not when this young runaway is his aunt.

Oliver might be nowhere to be seen right now, might even have missed his own mother’s funeral, but this is still his town, still Moira’s town, and the paranoia has been chasing her for too long now to ever let it go. She remembers the feeling, the ice in her veins when she saw her own face in Moira’s hands. _“I had one of our investigators write up a dossier on you,”_ she said, and made it crystal clear that her name was the least of what she knew about her.

It haunted her all through her pregnancy. It haunted her through the first year of William’s life. Everywhere she went, every time a stranger caught her eye, she would wonder. _Is she one of hers? Does he know her?_ And here she is, standing at her grave, and she is so achingly close to giving herself away, exposing her life and her son’s as well, to handing all those fears on a silver platter to that awful woman’s daughter, just so she can know she’s not alone.

It’s beyond reckless, beyond dangerous, and it freezes her blood all over again. Moira might be dead, but apparently her hold is not so easily shaken off.

So, no, she doesn’t say it. Doesn’t offer her support, her friendship, even a number to call.

Thea is still looking at her, though, eyes wide and almost hopeful, like she really needs that friendship, that offered support, like she really needs to know that one person out there is on her side, or at least willing to pretend they are. Even a total stranger, a nobody she’s never met before and probably never will again, even that would be enough. Samantha knows all too well how deep the hurt must be if she’s willing to take something like that, if a nameless face in the crowd is enough to make a difference. She’s been there herself, hasn’t she? More times than she can count over the last nine years, she’s been there.

She has to say something. Even if it’s not what she wants to say, or what Thea needs, she has to offer something, and she hates herself more than she ever hated Moira that what she has is not enough.

“If you’re ever in Central City…” she says again, and forces back her feelings. “…they have a great coffee place.”

It’s nothing, just a worthless waste of air, and Thea’s face falls like Samantha just slapped her in the face.

“Doubt I’ll be going that way,” she mumbles, trying just a little too hard not to sound bitter. “But thanks.”

Samantha sighs, wishes that she could take it all back, every moment in her life that has led up to this, to not being good enough in a moment when someone else needed her. What chance does William have when he grows up, if she can’t even offer a kind hand to a young woman she doesn’t even know?

Ashamed and upset, she seriously thinks about leaving it there. Easy enough to shrug and smile, to give Thea’s shoulder one last well-intentioned squeeze, turn around and walk away. It would be the most painless option for both of them, cutting off the moment before it cuts too close, and it would leave Moira and her final resting place in peace.

The fact is, she doesn’t belong here. Whatever issues Thea might be facing, she deserves more than this; she deserves a better confidante than the woman who only ever came here to make sure her child’s grandmother is really dead.

She doesn’t leave, though. She wants to, but it’s more than she can do when Thea is so clearly struggling.

Samantha wonders if this is a goodbye of sorts for her, if she’s trying to make peace with her mother’s memory before she leaves Starling for greener pastures, to scratch out her place in Moira’s life before turning the page on her own. It’s a difficult thing to do, Samantha knows, and wonders if one day the tables will turn on her. Ten years from now, will William be standing at her grave, trying to reconcile the love they had as mother and son with the secrets she kept from him and the lies she told? Will he try to make sense of her reasons, try to understand that it was for his sake, that she thought it was the right thing to do, or will he be too wounded and hold on to the hurt and the hate forever?

Looking at Thea, she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to know.

“Listen…” The word explodes out of her, unexpected and much too loud. She clears her throat, forces herself to dial it back a little, just enough, to remember that this is supposed to be about Thea, not about her. “I, uh… I know it’s not really my place to say anything, but I’m sure your mother did what she thought was right. I’m… I’m sure she thought…”

But she can’t say it. It might help or it might make things worse, but either way she can’t see it through. Whatever she’s feeling, whatever parts of herself she’s seeing in this grave, whatever parts of William she’s seeing in Thea’s bitterness, still she can’t bring herself to validate Moira’s choices. She can’t undo the suffering she’s caused, can’t repair the lives she’s ruined. If that means damning herself as well when the time comes, then so be it.

Still, it cuts so deep. Thea said that her mother lied, that her father was not her real father, and that… that is so close to home, isn’t it? The emotion burning behind her eyes, the way she doesn’t seem to know between one moment and the next whether she’s grieving or angry… it burns so bright and so, so close to her own truth.

“I’m sure she thought a lot of things,” Thea mutters; it’s the anger in control now, all grief set aside as though it never existed at all. “You’re real quick to defend people you never even knew.”

Samantha wants to say that she knows enough, that she’s familiar with Moira’s manipulations and Oliver’s behaviour, that she was sucked into the Queens’ orbit too and knows the damage that they leave in their wake. She wants to say that she and her son are living proof of all their worst traits. She’s not sure what she’d be shooting for, whether it’s to make Thea feel less alone in her hurt and hate, or simply soften the blow into something she can endure, but she knows it doesn’t matter. Whatever her intention, it’s not working. It’s only making it worse.

She takes a deep breath. It is so difficult to push their faces out of her mind. Oliver in the throes of passion, the burst of light behind both their eyes in a moment that changed everything for one of them and nothing for the other. Moira smoe weeks later, eyes like ice and fingers like stone, the unspoken threat dripping from every word she said. Oliver told her to come, and Moira told her to go; neither one of them were right back then, and Samantha is not right now.

Thea might not be right either; Samantha wouldn’t know. Still, young and angry and hurting as she is, she’s surely closer to it than any one of them.

“I’m sorry.” She is. Oh, how sorry she is. “You’re right, it’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have…”

“No, it’s fine.” Thea’s eyes are wet, but it doesn’t look like grief. Regret, most likely; those are tears Samantha knows a little too well. “At least you care, I guess. Or pretend to.”

Samantha sighs. “I just… well, I know what it’s like,” she says. Phrasing it like that hits unexpectedly hard. “People do terrible things, and convince themselves it’s for the right reasons. I guess…” She swallows very hard, forces herself to look down, to see Moira Queen’s final resting place and maybe lay a piece of herself to rest as well. “I guess they don’t realise until it’s too late, the lives they ruin in the process.”

“You can say that again,” Thea says.

She turns away from the grave, but Samantha doesn’t. She stares down, memorises every part of it, every clod of dirt, every perfectly-placed flower, commits to memory every detail she can. It gives the moment a sense of being real, a sense of honesty that’s sorely lacking in the rest of her life.

She never did this for Oliver, never came here to see the empty grave for herself. She thought about it once or twice, but couldn’t bring herself to look into the ground and know that it was William’s father. Funny; he’s the one she slept with, the one forever connected to her son, but in a twisted sort of way it feels almost more intimate with Moira. She’s the hound at her heels, the ghost at her back. All these years she’s been running, but it was never from Oliver.

Everything she is now, everything William is… in no small part, that’s Moira’s doing. She doesn’t know whether to thank the woman or curse her for that, and it makes her sadder than she expected to know that now she’ll never have the chance to do either. A different kind of loss, nothing like Thea’s but more poignant than she could ever have imagined it would be.

“I hope it works out for you,” she says at last. Her voice is lower than usual, maternal like she gets sometimes with William. Fitting, if brutal. “Wherever you end up. Whatever you do. I hope you find what you need.”

“Think it’ll take more than a road trip to do that,” Thea says, and suddenly she doesn’t look so young.

Samantha thinks of Central City, of that long uncomfortable train journey all those years ago, of the weight of her choices crashing down over her head. If Thea is anything like her, her life is going to get much harder before it gets even a little bit easier, but of course she can’t tell her that. She can’t tell this poor young girl that it’s going to be hell, that finding herself doesn’t come as easily as a train ticket to a new city.

Thea needs this fresh start, in her own way as desperately as young, scared, pregnant Samantha did. She’ll learn in time that it’s not easy, that it’s all well and good to turn your back on your old life but that life has a habit of coming back when you least expect it. She will learn those lessons just like Samantha herself did, and she doesn’t need some stranger to tell her that it’ll hurt. Let her have this moment, this delusion of a brighter horizon. Let it keep her strong when nothing else will.

“You’ll get there,” she says. The lie tastes unpleasant, but the truth would be so much worse. “I’m sure you will.”

“Yeah.” Thea doesn’t sound the least bit convinced, but she looks her in the eye when she says it; Samantha can see the ache in her, the desperate need to believe it, to believe _something_ , even if she knows it’s not true. “Thanks.”

Samantha doesn’t smile. It would be an insult to them both. “You’re welcome,” she says.

Finally, and with finality, she turns away. Away from the grave, away from Moira and her daughter, away from the moments and the people and the history that made her what she is. The best and worst of her, it all started here.

Now, at last, she turns away from it all and doesn’t look back.

***


End file.
